XP for artifact use

There is a long standing belief that if AMs are supposed to be support players, they should be able to get xp from using their adrenline to help others. In the past, a lot of this discussion has centered around the handling out of weapons.
The spheres provide one route to AMs getting XP. Here are a couple of other ideas from Spacey:

Spacey wrote:

... A secure way to have AMs to get XP for maxing is perhaps a derivative of something like the bolt, megablast, etc., where you aim at the player in question, spend a little adren on the AM side and adren on the other player's side, and using a "bolt of maxing" (or what ever we call it), you get the other player holding a maxed weapon.

Another possibility is to perhaps create a deal where we use a little of our adren, and out pops either a single use MWM or a maxing artifact which they then use 100 adren to do their thing.

Both of these could be implemented. Both could give the AMs a nominal amount of xp for helping others.

I like the thought of this. What's the general consenus? Worth implementing? If so, which way?
Would people use it?
What sort of artifacts should there be, apart from MWM and Max, that could be shared in this way?
Max+1?
Current modifier+1?
Remove curse from weapon?

And what should the split in adrenaline be? Should the AM provide all the adrenaline and get XP. If the AM hasn't got the adrenaline but the other player has, should it still go ahead but the AM get no xp?
Thoughts?

I think Spacey might want a "Make piercing weapon".
Others might want a "Make vampire" or "Make energy".
If we went for these, we could make the new weapon non-droppable. So the AM himself cannot get hold of them. So you are helping someone else, not yourself.
You could even consider a "make piercing energy" just to make Spacey's day

Spacey wrote:

... A secure way to have AMs to get XP for maxing is perhaps a derivative of something like the bolt, megablast, etc., where you aim at the player in question, spend a little adren on the AM side and adren on the other player's side, and using a "bolt of maxing" (or what ever we call it), you get the other player holding a maxed weapon.

I wonder. In PvP, could you use a "bolt of MWM" against an opponent, and change their vorpal to something else?

How about pointing a "Bolt of Max+1" at a medic and the medic getting a Superhealer+1?

Ok Szlat... I think I will recend my sentence of "Szlat must die" which you gained for the vamp razor flies and such... for a bit at least. But rest assured, I already have the stakes out, and the rawhide soaking.

Taking some of your points, in rough order, you mention "Remove curse from weapon"... why bother. That is the MWM or Max, since misfortune became luck, draining became energy, harm the protection, and so forth. As you think about it, a number of these, if you were to max them, become desirable, sometimes to the group in general.

Now, WRT the current+1,I was actually thinking about that the other night, having used the MAX+1 unsuspectingly on a normal weapon and getting a damage +1. I was thinking, outside of this jump, which should probably expend at least 100 adren., it probably should for weapons below their max use a fraction of what it would take to run it to max. So perhaps running a damage +2 to a damage +3, perhaps have it use say 75 adren (150 / (4-2)), or a peircing 3 to a 4 use 50 adren (150/(6-3)). Then, when you hit the max, suddenly, it becomes like our normal MAX+1, and takes 250 adren.

Now, as for the XP... if we are talking a beam type deal, without the dropping of a one-off, I would say base it directly off of the adren used by the AM. So if I do a max, using my adren, perhaps 15xp, while a MWM beam would be 10xp. Note, I just picked 10% for a quick and easy percentage. Perhaps a good way to determine the percentage is to figure how much health can be regained with 100 adren, and look at how much XP the medic would get for healing that many HP. Seems like a fair way of equating the two as well, would you not say?

And on the dropping of one-offs, the AM could get XP for the drop, perhaps based on the cost to do the drop (15adren for dropping a max might also give 15 instant XP, no XP when it is used, a MWM would cost 10 adren and give 10 instant XP)... as for the use...Hmmm... part of me says that the other player should not get any XP... do non-medics get XP for using a healing weapon still?? If so, then perhaps a simiar deal... so say 100 adren -> 100 health, and using a healing weapon to heal 100 health gives 5xp... use a one-off MWM, get no more than 5xp. Oh... and the dropped artifact could look like a the normal artifact, but with a "1" imposed on it.

Now, lets say an AM drops a special one-off, which has the adren built into it... this I would say should grant XP to the AM only, and again based directly on the adren used to create it, perhaps with an added bonus. So perhaps that one off MWM+adren package, which takes say 110 adren to create... the 10xp for the drop, another 10 for the adren, and a bonus of 5. MAX would then be 15xp for the drop, another 15 for the packaged adren, and a bonus of 5. Again, just numbers out of the air. Notice... this precludes the dropping of a max+1 with pre-packaged adren, at least with current costs and limits. Looks? Maybe like the one-off, but with a red&white accent.

On the "make piercing" or "make energy" MWMs... I would say a combined weapon which was base damage but piercing, and a bit of an energy boost over a normal piercing would be the best of everything. So many possiblities, and I will pinata them all out here for folks to think about. It could be essentially a peircing +0, with an extra +2% or perhaps even 4% adren to begin with. Or, with this in mind, it might create a piercing 0, with the effects of a energy +1 WRT the energy, and we could perhaps use a a MAX @ 150 adren (or MAX+1 @250adren per additional plus, if we wanted make it more difficult), until we got something which might have the affects of a piercing +6/energy +7. Or, for a real combination... an energy weapon, same limits, but does 5% extra damage per plus and is piercing (e.g. ignores DR). Indeed, I like this last one when combined with the infinite aspects... So it might end up, with us dumping extra adren into it to totally beef it up, get us a +4 adren weapon, with +5% per plus for a total of +20% (same as a normal +2, or a piercing +4) , giving say +2% + 2% per plus for +10% adren (just a notch above the energy+4), and infinite ammo. I could even live without the extra +2% adren, given the infinite nature, and given it is also piercing, I could even see making it non-MAX+1 if folks really were against the idea... but consider this... when a medic heals, DR does not come into play like it would when the AM is shooting bugs. And yes, doing this like the medic weapon and making it non-droppable and one weapon is a must. (and yes, it may necessitate some thinking about some of the artifacts and their costs).

Now, if we are talking about a MWM which is targeted for specific weapon types, for use by others... Hmmm... let me think about that a bit.

And your comment about a bolt of MWM... using it against an opponent with a vorpal in PvP is downright wicked... I like it. >

Never had that much fun since dropping a crate of wands of wonder into a keep almost 3 decades ago. But the bolt of MAX+1to get a superhealer... what would the adren cost be? Once again, I would think that it would be higher than a MAX+1, and since it is currently equal to the max adren I can have, that would mean that the MAX+1 must drop its cost, or the max adren for a AM would need to go up. Would we perhaps make it so that an AM, once having certain things like leech, surge and drip maxed, along with adren, db, dr, etc. could go to say 300 adren instead of 250? Worth a thought.

Well, nuff for now. Want to play some tonight before bed.

Szlat wrote:

In PvP, could you use a "bolt of MWM" against an opponent, and change their vorpal to something else?

Well as everyone said... Adrenaline masters are like the 'wizards', and one of their majors is making powerful magic weapons... so they could destroy the magic weapons.... couldnt they?

If we go down the route of using single_use artifacts, then the xp will have to be granted when the artifact is used, not when it is dropped. This is to avoid the exploit of a AM just sitting in a corner spawning artifacts and getting xp.
We would also need to make it so that AMs cannot use single-use artifacts, or at least not their own, to avoid a AM spawning an artifact then using it, just to get the xp.

The beam method neatly gets around those problems, and allows us to do specific upgrades according to the class of the target person.

The difficulty in using the beam method is co-ordination. The target player has to be still, and has to have the correct weapon selected when the AM initiates the max/mwm. If you got the wrong player, or the correct player but before he has the correct weapon, then it could cause problems. We could really do with some way for the target player to latch that he is ready. Instead, we will probably need to rely on verbal communication. Or perhaps a "squat when ready" understanding. The single-use artifact is neater in this aspect because the timing of when the change occurs is down to the target user.

I think all in all, the beam method may be best - but I am not entirely convinced. Is there a third way?

Oh, and these new artifacts may need to be in LA level 4?

I think that the remote Max and Max+1 should produce weapons that are not-droppable.

This means the AM is giving someone else a better weapon, that they cannot get a clone of.

So the key question is how much xp?

To be honest, most AMs share good weapons now anyway without any xp reward. And I think that should continue. Just like LWs can share good weapons.
The difference here is that the AM is giving upgrades to others that the AM cannot get back himself.

So, let's assume the remote-MWM uses 100 adrenaline - just like the local artifact, and let's see how much xp that adrenaline would give via other uses.

Triple. 100 adrenaline means 10 seconds means upto 20*1.4*100*(3-1)=5600 extra damage. High level monsters tend to have approx 1xp per 50health. So this would give 5600/50 = 110xp. (Assuming the monsters are there, you never miss, you have weapon speed+50 and a flak+4). Note that this does not include any payback adrenaline to get from killing monsters. e.g. if the 5600 was 6 titans, you would get 6*32 = 192 adrenaline back from surge. Ooops more than you started with.

Spheres. Cost 20 per second, so get 5 seconds. Each person in sphere pays back 1 xp per second. Assuming you have 4 others in the sphere, you get 4*5=20xp.

Medic blast. costs 50 adrenaline. I think that you would typically get 100-250 healing for about 4 people typically (if anyone has better details please confirm), so that would be 700 health, or 70xp for maxed experienced healing

Spacey's example. 100 adrenaline gives 500 health via booster, which would earn a medic 50xp

Beam. 100 adrenaline will give 600 damage. Say a warlord and a krall. 12 xp.

At first glance, I thought Spacey's 10xp for the MWM (10%) was a bit high, but it doesn't look excessive to me.

I suppose an extension of this would be triple/invulnerability beams that you could fire for 50 adrenaline that gave the target triple/invulnerability for 5 seconds, for say 5 xp.

Or even an adrenaline boost that transfers adrenaline to a LW so they can keep their own triple/globe running. (Might need a change to the LA hud so they can see how much adrenaline people have left in order for it to really work.)

This would allow AMs to stand back and provide support to LWs in the thick of it. See someone get hit by a null queen and give them 5 secs invulnerability. The triple for 5 secs could even help medics desperately trying to heal people.

Let's Just make sure the charater doesnt go from Mage to Merchant.

If you could allow for other players to give out adrenaline to LA's I think that would be cool. A lot of times early in maps I'll have plenty of spare adrenaline with nothing to use it on and it sucks for an LA to have to use up so much adren to max a weapon for me, yet that are madly scrambling to get their own weapons early in maps.

This still works with the thinking that the LA should be like a mage. I give materials to the mage, but only they have the expertise to max weapons, etc.

Mach wrote:

If you could allow for other players to give out adrenaline to LA's I think that would be cool. A lot of times early in maps I'll have plenty of spare adrenaline with nothing to use it on and it sucks for an LA to have to use up so much adren to max a weapon for me, yet that are madly scrambling to get their own weapons early in maps.

There may be a console command DropAdrenaline - try it and see.

Szlat wrote:

So the key question is how much xp?
At first glance, I thought Spacey's 10xp for the MWM (10%) was a bit high, but it doesn't look excessive to me.

Good... because I was thinking it might be a bit high myself, but did not want to bias things into thinking that way when in fact I could have been low. hehehe

All this talk of changing this or that in recent days has me wondering where this is all coming from.

Are many of our players complaing of class imbalance? Has Dru been trying to think of ways to change the gameplay? Are people just fed up with the current state of affairs?

Just curious.

As an aside, but related to the topic at hand....

I see a couple issues with making all the AM's a support class only:

1. We don't get XP for anything but killing, (as has been addressed in this thread) and I'm not sure there are practicle other ways to earn XP. Handing out weapons/maxing weapons is a nice idea, but the game is way too fast paced to stand around handing out this or that or maxing weapons for people. We only get 10 secs in between rounds. Not a lot of time. At least medics can get XP for healing at any time. Not to mention that you'd have to basically strip the other classes of the ability to make/start with their own magic weapons. Otherwise there won't be much maxing/handing out. Just watch a match to see my point.

2. Let's be honest here. 99.99999% of the players on this server like to score a lot of points in a match (regardless of class). There has always been, and always should be, a bit of friendly competition. I have never heard someone say, "I'm aiming for the lowest score in DC history". To get the 'support' classes to focus more on helping LW's win the match, there should be a much, much better incentive to win. e.g. raise the XP for winning much higher, give the support classes "bonus points" added to their finally tally on the scoreboard...etc. The desire to see your name at the top of the scoreboard will never totally go away. And if we don't add any incentive to be a support class, we'll just have a bunch of LW's running around.

Just food for thought.