I’ve notice this before, it’s pretty annoying. Did you get to roll on my loot that tank pulled? I’ve never seen any shiney sparks coming from corpses when another group in the warband pulled the NPC.

It’s not something I’ve look at in detail but I’ve notice quiet a lack of loot when I’m in a 2 man healer party within a warband.

By Mantel on Oct 9, 2008

This is more of a response to something you said in the other thread:

“Would it be faster if I mixed in some scenario RvR? Only if I was winning, but that’s beside the point.”

Actually, I’ve found almost no connection between winning the scenario and XP gain. I usually queue with 2 other people from my guild and we go into our own scenario party and just pick off order stragglers in groups of 2 or 3. Regardless of if my side wins or loses, we always come out at the top of the XP gain pile at the end.

By Zealbot on Oct 9, 2008

I can’t really see playing WAR without spending a lot of my time in scenarios. The PvE game is generally pretty mediocre unless you happen to stumble on a PQ that has enough participants for completion (which is becoming increasingly rare on my servers). Not bad at all, but for pure PvE I think there are better games out.

By Yeebo on Oct 9, 2008

I haven’t tried forming my own small parties, but I generally get pretty berserk XP from scenarios win or lose. The main variable seems to be whether I’m doing well on the kill meters. Sometimes if a scenario is really unbalanced I’ll get screwed on XP, but it doesn’t happen too often. Of course some classes are much easier to wrack up kills on than others.

That said, XP really needs to be shared among everyone in a Warband of any sort, including scenario participants. It never occurred to me that it wasn’t, that’s a bit daft (if it’s not a bug).

By Yeebo on Oct 9, 2008

What’s the point of the game? That’s what should be rewarded.

If the the whole point of WAR is RvR, make the best rewards come from participating in RvR. Give enemy players a better loot table the bigger YOUR warband is. If we want people grouped up, roaming the countryside, looting and pillaging, then there needs to be a reward greater than grinding scenarios. Loot and experience should be commensurate with the intentions.

By Castorid on Oct 9, 2008

@Snafzg: I think we are at least in agreement that PvE isn’t as rewarding as it should be. Apart from PQs, it’s really just a necessary evil to get your rank up. That isn’t exactly what Mythic promised us, as I recall.

By Yeebo on Oct 9, 2008

Now you’re stealing articles from my comments. I demand royalities.

From my comment on yesterday’s article:
I concur the PvE is too slow (and I think they really penalize you for killing a mob at your level or below), but you can’t compare WoW leveling to WAR leveling when you spent so much time perfecting WoW leveling.

As far as the amount of exp you get in scenarios:
For each kill made, your group gets a percentage of the exp earned based on how much damage your group dealt. If you’re in a DPS heavy group (or a DPS class who is solo) then you’ll get a higher percentage of the exp. If you’re in a tank or healer heavy group, those people are getting some of the exp without contributing to the damage. So yes, it does reward damage classes for going solo.

The exp bonus awarded at the end of the scenario is based on your team’s score compared to the 500 points. The closer you are the more bonus exp you get. So if you lose 500-475 you get a ton of exp. If you get rolled 500-50 not so much.

But even if your team gets rolled, you still get the exp from kills. And if you’re a DPS class who is solo, that can add up.

By Tim on Oct 9, 2008

The truly unfortunate part about this is that as a healer my kill-rate is a joke, and if I want to complete quests in any sort of timely fashion I need to be a level or two above the mobs I’m killing.

Also, being a healer I seem to get tags for kills even if I never touch the player in a scenario. So all I (apparently) need to do is to spam my mass heal and rake in the xp. It also helps that spamming my mass heal is probably the best thing I can do for my group in a scenario anyway.

By Phoe on Oct 9, 2008

@Phoe, from what I can tell as a healer you don’t contribute directly to XP gain. You just keep people in your party alive so they can kill people and you can get xp.

So if you’re in party 1 and party 1 happens to be all healers, and all the dpsers are in party 2, you will get very little xp.

However, you will still get crazy renown for all the healing you’re doing.

By Zealbot on Oct 9, 2008

Well, I know I’m not joining any Warbands after this. Didn’t DAoC have a group XP bonus? By the sound of it Warbands are broken bad. I think everybody should put in a feedback survey in game. I know The Greenskin [dot] com has a ton of readers. Let’s fix this.

By scarybooster on Oct 9, 2008

I can’t say anything nice about anything that isn’t related to RvR scenarios, but I do have a bit of a tip for you, regarding leveling in PvE: kill collectors.

Run one or two chapters ahead of where you are now, so the enemies are several (~5) levels higher than you. Figure out what the kill collector wants, find a camp of them, and slaughter them for hours. Return to the collector for a big reward. Doing this will net you several hundred experience per kill (since the enemies are bigger and badder than yourself), ontop of another hundred or two experience per kill when you visit the kill collector again.

As for the comment regarding the renown/experience bonuses for finishing well in a scenario: I’m not so sure that those bonuses are actually applied. I’ve seen those bonuses several times, but they were never actually “given” to me. I saw the numbers, but the numbers didn’t get dumped into my current renown/experience pools. Is it a bug, or is it just me?

By Belegran on Oct 9, 2008

If you play with your food (does anyone not?), you likely have taken a pancake and stretched it out, then poked a hole in the middle of it and watched as it all fell to pieces on your plate..

That’s what happened to snafzg in gunbad whenever he got aggro! *poke* and ’splosion! hehe. I should make a macro for /res snafzg

… except once, when he used some gobbo sneakiness to root some spiders that were after him and booked it behind malitas!

By Nazgum on Oct 9, 2008

SOOO bored! All servers down until further notice… your Server status LIES!!!!

By MrMatthew on Oct 9, 2008

This explains why my XP gain has been so crappy and leveling has been so slow. I try to experience more content by going to different areas and doing quests which may be a level lower. So XP gain seems to have come to a painful slowing, and this would now explain why.

So I guess I’m suppose to say “screw the content” and go and skip a bunch of it simply to fight mobs higher level than me so I can gain some XP rather than near nothing.

They really need to fix this stuff, and hopefully pointing this out, and continuing to point this out, will get them in motion towards fixing things.

By ScytheNoire on Oct 9, 2008

Yet again, I agree 100%.

I did gunbad at… 22, had ranks 22-29 in the warband. We did the lower and higher end content within the dungeon and it was not worth the XP it was just pure XP. Sure we did the quests, but in order to complete these quests within you would have to go out of your way for everybody in the warband to complete it. And the reward in XP was really not worth it. The only way to level in this game is to solo pve while queued for scenarios.

By Matt on Oct 9, 2008

So if one of you DPSers leaves group in a scenario should I even bother healing you? Do I get anything for it if your not in my group?

By Derrial on Oct 10, 2008

@ScytheNoire - I wouldn’t really say “screw the content”. You have to play how you want to play. Yea, they have the leveling fiends who are going to experience high end RvR within a month of release, and the lower tiers may suffer a bit for it, but it’s your time and money. It’s a game; don’t let it stress you out, or its purpose is pointless.

@Derrial - I see where you’re going here, and I understand. The mechanic that lets you gain more exp/renown when you are a solo group needs some work. It makes sense but promotes solo mannerisms in a game that is really geared toward teamwork.

I guess what it really comes down to is the fact that the game has been out for less than a month. I think I would stress over being 40 at this point since it would leave me wondering what the point was. I’m sure it will all balance out in the end.

By Odius on Oct 10, 2008

This has been something that’s made me roll alts instead of continuing on with my lvl 20 Sorceress. I know leveling should be slow, and it’s what I expect… but being stuck at level 19 for something like 6 hours with all quests in your tier done… that’s just not fun.

By Roulex on Oct 10, 2008

@Roulex - Do you focus on PvE mostly? At 19, you are now able to hit the T3 scenarios so that should ease the pain. I think it’s all based on what type of player you are. If you are used to the PvE grind and end game, the concept of this game could leave you questioning. It’s really just a healthy mix of PvP and PvE that make the levels fly.

By Odius on Oct 10, 2008

I wan’t aware that only characters in the group of the combat starter got XP in warbands. I will check that out tonight and if that is always the case I say bug report it and see if we can get them to fix it.

By Sammual on Oct 10, 2008

I went into Gunbad once with a warband. I didn’t notice that the game was dividing XP this way. That would explain the crappy amount of XP that I left with. It sucks though because even knowing this, you’re going to have a main puller and his group will get the majority of taps.

By Skyla on Oct 10, 2008

I agree with the reduction being a bit too overzealous.. Especially the fact that in many parts of the game, we out level the mobs in the quests we’re completing.

Its stressful, but at least there is plenty to keep me entertained within the leveling.

By Brian Riedel on Oct 10, 2008

I hope they fix these formulas soon. Its terribly sad to see everyone just standing in the warcamp waiting for the scenarios. IMO the scenarios are the dullest part of the game since its just capture the flag variety. I have been playing CTF since quake1 came out.

The keeps are ignored along with all the PQs. The keep equipment in T3 keeps is now near useless. In beta the keep equipment was quite decent and there were plenty of people wandering the RvR zones.

By Crode on Oct 10, 2008

On my 40 I did every quest in all 3 tiers except the last 2 areas of elf and every PQ to max inf all the way up to chapter 20ish in all 3 tiers. That was enough xp to hit 40 and thats with a good dose of rvr thrown in. My first alt i am working on I am doing all rvr/scenarios to level and it is soooo slow. the second alt I am doing a mix of quests and scenarios and it is a bit faster but not much. It does seem funny they are putting mechanics in place to slow people down from leveling while at the same time putting other things in to help them get more xp to level faster

By Kevin on Oct 16, 2008

I agree. The PvE has to be raised a bit, I enjoy grinding occasionally. Unfortunately, because the exp isn’t that great, I tend to stay away from it unless it’s for PQ’s.

Gunbad: I totally agree. They need to fix this. I went with a full warband, and the only group that got any exp was the tanker group. It also does that for the quest kills. The entire time I was there, I finished none of the quests until I was transferred into the tanker group to help heal.

By Laessilana on Oct 28, 2008