Experience and level gaining is bad

[Lubor Kolar]

I reincarnated all my characters (instead of ressurection).
I wonder, because:
* all my characters are gaining ninja level very fast
* my fighters gain no level for a long, long time, but after gained first (neophyte fighter) level, they gained next levels (novice) quickly - more faster than neophyte level
* although my magic users cast stamina, health and light spells very often and I am in the middle of the 4th floor (worms floor), they didn't receive any priest/wizard level so they are unable to cast for ex. Weaken Non Material Being spell.

[beowuuf]

I wouldn't say bad....needs tweaking, and a fundamental decision. What does everyone want? The old DM faster gain, or do you like having to work for your levels. Especially if you can port characters it might be nice to have to work harder for levels, rather than expecting to finish with at least a master level in each game....if you don't decide to train up too!

I agree about the worm level being tough, but that was more the constant generation when my characters weren't ready to go toe to toe with a worm. Infact by the end of it I could, and suddenly it made it annoyingly easy...: ( Ok, slimes with one shot kills now to go...i'll shut up : )

Spell levels are definately the ones I noticed going up slowly though, I cast who knows how many spells and both magic users at difference experience levels only went up once, which seemed odd.

[Lubor Kolar]

I think to gain master-levels you must train your champoins a lot!
I it really sad then my chapions are diyng on the 4th floor because no my champion is able to cast "YA BRO" cure poison spell even with the lowest power! This is really bad, I spend about 600 mana points for each of my magic user casting spells like heal or light and they didn't received neither NEOPHYTE level. In original DM I gained about 2-3 magic levels (Wizard and Priest) when I was on the BEGINNING of the 4th floor.

[George Gilbert]

The rate of experience gain from magic casting is my own model and so different to DM. I won't tell you exactly what it is, but I'll give you a clue; it is possible to gain levels quickly.

In particular casting spells that will almost certainly fail gains you very little experience (i.e. a novice wizard trying to cast a level 6 fireball will gain only about 1XP, as it's futile, but casting a level 2 fireball may gain 20XP or so. Similarly casting something way below yourself will gain very few XP (e.g. an Archmaster Priest casting a level 1 VI potion will gain about 1XP, a novice Priest might gain 10XP). Basically you've got to be living on the edge to gain substantial amounts of experience and advance levels quickly...

If you'd prefer the old DM way then say so and i'll change it back, but I think it's probably better this way.

[Lubor Kolar]

I understand, but what I see wrong is that my (and I repeat, reincarnated, ie without any experience in magic area) characters wasn't able to case lowest level FUL or lowest level YA or lowest level VI spells so I had a big problems on the 3rd floor where I had to open door with ZO spell, which my character did on about 8th cast of the lowest ZO spell, all other tryies was message that my character is not so experienced to create this spell.
I understand it does help if I try to cast high powered spells (even if I can be sure that my try will fail)?
When I tried to case lowest FUL spell, I succeeded in about 50% and I was never able to cast second lowest FUL spell.
It is better to try to cast second lowest FUL spells evef if I am not always able to cast lowest FUL spells?
BTW I really like the system where beginner gains more XP that expert for the same spell.

[Andrew Ker]

I don't like the new magic XP system. You say that it is possible to gain levels fast. That may be true, but it certainly doesn't seem that casting spells in the usual way (i.e. not training, just playing) gains you much at all. So unless you a) train your players AND b) happen to hit on the method for gaining levels fast then you are going to be in trouble. It's a shame for people who want to play the game "normally" that the magic skills lag so far behind.

With the rune system it's not possible to try using higher spells anyway, until you're deep into the dungeon, because they aren't available.

On the other hand, it's too easy to gain ninja levels by throwing stuff. Try it and see - it takes no time to get very high levels (seems to be faster throwing heavier objects).

AK

[beowuuf]

You can gain fighter experience falling down pits! Is this because of the damage inflicted? If not, and is deliberate, ninja would probably be better.

I agree, the fighter/ninja leves seem to be easier to gain - is this a concious balanace against the magic levels?

I have been casting at about my limit for priest levels and don't seem to have advanced alot either - then again I have been constantly on potions, have you made the more common spells low experience gainers because they are easy and most likely to be used?

[George Gilbert]

In DM you gain fighter levels for taking damage (I found this out, to my great surprise, when walking into a wall by accident about 10 years ago whilst running away from a scorpion!) - I've implemented this in RTC...

[beowuuf]

Yeah, i know, it's always annoying when a magic user died from a sneak attack and gaining the fighter level that might have given him the health to survive ; )

Well, i'm pretty much near the end, as far as I know, I have been constantly casting potions on the limit of my magic (either the ones that work in emergencies, or the level abovce that doesn't when stocking up, or using up mana). And I only gained one level! As I asked, do you have to push yourself with the spells you cast two?> Cause all mine were functional VI's, and practise fireballs.

Also, stamina seems to be oddly low (maybe due to the lack of priste levels, not sure...) I just usually have three digit staimna and even the fighters are still on double while their health is in the 200 odd.

And further to the 0 mana people gaining mana. Halk gained a priest level, and was wearing the moonstone, and as always no mana gained to his 5. After a while i thought of creating a man potion and seeing if that would stimulate proper regeneration, and when i looked he now had gained three mana! Stamm, who was also carrying around a vorpal blade, still had nothing, though after the potiioon spell both seemed to gain mana slowly but surely...

[Gambit37]

I have to agree with Andrew on this one. It's really not fun playing DM with the new magic experience model.

I'm on level 9, and I have Daroou still on 6 mana and a neophyte wizard. The only spell he can cast is FUL and he still won't advance a level after I don't know how many attempts. Tiggy is a Journeyman wizard on about 40 mana, and Elijah on 29 Mana and a Novice wizard. Only Tiggy can cast a LO Fireball, no-one else is anywhere close to that. It's gonna make toasting Rats mighty hard...

It's virtually impossible to gain experience by simply "playing" RTC and not deliberately "training". In DM, my characters should be able to cast at least UM or even ON fireballs by now. It's not fun having to wait so long for experience, and I don't agree that having to chance upon the method of gaining levels fast is a good model for a playable game.

I personally would favour something closer to DM. It's just frustrating as it is. Add on top of that the impossibly hard regeneration model, and RTC is already too tough for me and I'm a seasoned DM player. I've said it several times already: I know you want RTC to be a challenge George, but give us a break... please?

[beowuuf]

I'm 'finished' RTC DM in that I have gotten Lord Chaos on his own, though of course can't fry him, having done all the secrets along the way, plus have gone down to say hi to Libbie ; )

The magic model is definately odd, and the only reason i have gotten far is cause i have boris and wuuf, large mana guys, and the fighter system is still quite fast. I have been, especially since you have said it, constantly casting potions of the magical egde, but haven't advanced fast : ( The only thing that has done that was using vorpal blades for my front guys, who stuck their tonuge out to the magic users at the back and went up to about novice/apprentice just fighting a few faders.

Either the xp gained is low, or the penalty for casting below/above your level is too high, so i don't suppose you can tell us explicitely the model for both magic and fighters/ninjas (which respectively is slightly above DM, and way above DM)?

[Andrew Ker]

I've completely diagnosed the experience system for ninja levels gained by throwing objects. It doesn't sound much, but it was a major undertaking to work out the details of the algorithm. I won't post it because it probably counts as a spoiler, but I will if people ask.

(Throwing items, and knowing how to do it in the best way, can gain ninja levels ridiculously fast. I could probably boost one player all the way to archmaster in 2 or 3 hours of training, although that's a rough guess.)

Anyway, I expect that a similar method is used for gaining ninja or fighter experience using weapons, and also wizard or priest (whichever) levels using the vorpal blade. I don't really have time to work it out though.

(I believe that I can probably use my new knowledge to increase fighter levels rather quicker than before too, perhaps up to the same speed as I used to in DM.)

The magic system is much more complicated. But here is one figure - for low-level wizards, the best spell I found to cast is LO FUL which gains 18 XP per successful cast and 9 per unsuccessful attempt (I think). Given that you need 501 to get to Neophyte (1001 to Novice, 2001 to Apprentice, 4001 to Journeyman etc) this pretty low.

(I could be wrong with these figures and George might contradict me btw.) Also the tricks I found for increasing ninja levels very fast do not work for magic, it seems. I don't know how 18 XP compares to DM, but in practice levels are gained so much slower.

For priests it seems even worse. To be honest, I don't believe that it *is* possible to gain levels quickly.

I'd favour a return to the original DM system for magic. It's worth thinking what we want from an experience system though. Is there a system which works reasonably for a variety of difficulties of dungeon (into which we expect characters or varying skill to be ported)? The problem with a fixed XP per spell system is that in difficult dungeons it's not reasonable to expect characters to gain levels as fast as easier dungeons - the difference is in view of the fact that the levels are exponential in terms of XP, but mana is only slightly super-liner.

Assuming that we don't want to change how much health/stamina/mana is gained when levels are gained, it seems to me that there needs to be some way to make the higher levels closer together. Otherwise future dungeons designed for higher-level starting characters will see much less improvement in the characters.

Just my rambilings...

AK

[Gambit37]

Uh? How on earth did you work out exact values for experience?

[Andrew Ker]

> Uh? How on earth did you work out exact values for experience?

By carefully counting how many actions (throwing an object, casting a spell succesfully, failing to cast a spell) were needed by different people in different circumstances. Assuming that you gain a constant (integral) amount of XP within each level and by the same character (experiments bear this out) you can narrow down the possibilities for what the levels change at. Some simple discrete maths is needed. An example - throwing a 0.3kg object takes 32 throws for e.g. Nabi to get from zero level to Neophyte. The amount of XP needed to get from zero to Neophyte can't be 100, we can deduce, because if he were getting 3 XP per throw he'd need 34 and if he were getting 4 XP per throw it would only be 25. Assuming that the number is not in the many thousands, you can rapidly narrow down the possibilities.

In fact I was strongly expecting it to be around 500,1000,2000,etc because those were the original DM values supposedly. So a few results confirming that was all I needed to convince me.

(BTW George, did you intend it to 501,1001,2001,etc or is this a little bug, or am I wrong in my deductions?)

Having decided that it was 501,1001,2001 etc then all you need to do is count how many of the relevant action you need to go from zero level to neophyte, then to novice and so on (keeping careful track of the exact XP). Then I had to work out why this was different for different characters, and also different depending on what level you had attained already (this doesn't seem to apply to spell XP, but it definitely does to throwing XP) and so on.

The complete diagnosis of ninja throwing XP took a long long time - basically one whole day of throwing carefully selected objects by selected characters and restarting to do it over again, plus pencil and paper. But the final formula is not all that complicated in fact.

(Hint: it depends on the characters dexterity, ninja level, and the weight of the object being thrown.)

AK

[Andrew Ker]

Yes I have no life.

AK

[Gambit37]

Don't worry, I have no life either

Certainly the weight of the object thrown seems to make a difference. I filled a chest with stuff and started throwing that at a door and received ninja levels far faster than simply throwing a load of screamer slices around.

[Andrew Ker]

Yes, the XP is roughly proportional to the square root of the weight.

(Although some of my earlier counts are casting a bit of doubt on my original figures. I didn't take into account the possibility that the dungeon level you are on affects things. Someone said it did in the original DM. I might have made a mistake too. I don't know.)

AK

[Gambit37]

Yes, in DM and CSB there was a depth factor that affected things like party speed, experience gained, regenerated monster strengths etc.

I don't know if this implemented in RTC. Party movement is generally slower than DM anyway, so it's difficult to measure any differences. It's harder playing RTC than DM because of this.

[Andrew Ker]

It seems that either I missed some limit in my ninja throwing XP calculation (which seems to work absolutely perfectly for the first dungeon level and ninja levels up to about craftsman), or you actually get *less* XP as you go deeper down the dungeon. That doesn't sound right does it?

AK

[beowuuf]

Maybe george has introduced a limit like he did with magic...fighters using chop ain'#t going to gain as much experience as the used to and need to be using something higher, ninjas throwing certain heavy objects just for the xp aren't going toget rewarded as much.

Either that or he has afdded the nasty 'lower xp fudge' to level depth for an additional challenge...

[George Gilbert]

Fixed for V0.08