Various quick notes: The target release varies depending on the change. For exp tables, I'd say that it can be put in 1.x as a commented out value, and if desirable, make it the default in 2.0
One thing to keep in mind in all these discussions is the relation of this lost with permanent exp. I think right now, whatever permanent exp you have earned does not affect the loss - it just means you can never have less than your permanent value. But if you die several ties relatively quickly, you can get down to that value pretty quickly. One change in this area could be to to base the experience loss based on the difference between current exp and permanent exp. Thus, for practical purposes, it would be very difficult to ever get all the way down to your permanent exp. But then I'm not sure if that would make any real difference (what could be interesting is having different permanent exp ratios for different skills). I think there will always be some issues with skill inequalities. Lets presume that under a revised system, you basically loose 1 level in each skill. That is certainly a lot better than it is now, but if you are level 80 in one handed fighting and level 10 in literacy, loosing that level in literacy will seem much harsher (in terms of actual character power/importance, level 79 vs 80 in fighting won't have a huge impact (in terms of percentage of actual level less, 9 vs 10 is bigger than 79 vs 80). Not sure how to fix that. One thing to keep in mind for the original tables is that they were done before we had 64 bit experience values. This put the limit at around 2 billion, which is why the hard table has that as the max exp. When the level array was increased to 115 with 64 exp values, the last 5 levels had a lot steeper curve because it could be done and to make it hard for people to max out their character. The old values were not changed for compatibility reasons. Because of that, as far as I can see, as long as the new exp total for level 115 is above that of the old value, there doesn't really need to be a big change in the curve for the final levels. I think under a revised system, you'll actually see fewer people at max levels, since it will be just as hard to get that much exp, so you are more likely to see characters sprinkled out amongst several levels when 100+ _______________________________________________ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
