Author Topic: XP system seems wonky  (Read 14491 times)

Offline CitizenFry

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XP system seems wonky
« on: October 23, 2014, 11:38:35 pm »
It seemed like I wasn't getting much xp for finishing achievements, so I kept an eye on my xp for the last two games of the evening.

Penultimate game, engineer, spire, Raid on the Refinery:
- ran all over the ship repairing tons of stuff
- Finished a tier 13 engineering achievement (Perspiring)
- Double digit hull rebuilds (not repairs - actually rebuilds!)
- double digit fire extinguishes
- Approximate XP for the game: 530

Final game, engineer, spire, Dunes 3v3:
- sat on a heavy flak most of the game
- got one or two heavy flak kills (definitely one at 1000m+, and maybe a short range also), and a small number of hull breaks, balloon breaks, and engine breaks (maybe 2-3 of each)
- repaired/rebuilt almost nothing, maybe 3-5 things
- Approximate XP for the game: 1120

So uh...is the XP weighted super-heavily towards kills, and away from things like achievements and rebuilds, or is the system buggy, or what? Is there any official documentation of how much XP various things are worth?
« Last Edit: October 23, 2014, 11:50:21 pm by CitizenFry »

Offline Milevan Faent

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Re: XP system seems wonky
« Reply #1 on: October 24, 2014, 12:52:09 am »
I'm sending an email to muse with a link to this thread. This sounds like something that they need to have brought to their attention.

Offline sparklerfish

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Re: XP system seems wonky
« Reply #2 on: October 24, 2014, 12:55:38 am »
I think the achievements should be worth more.  Some of those are freakin' hard.  I got one today for 5 more kills than deaths against enemy captains level [I don't remember]+, and got barely any XP for it, though I don't remember the exact amount.  I know the idea with the XP system is to move the focus away from achievements, but I've worked really hard on a lot of those and feel compelled to finish the ones I'm working on and it's disappointing to get very little reward for them.

Offline Andika

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Re: XP system seems wonky
« Reply #3 on: October 24, 2014, 09:02:34 am »
I have a similar problem with the current xp system. With the current settings, the system actually supports stacking instead of promoting a well-balanced spread of players.

Yesterday MM dropped me into a lobby where I could tell from the start that I was on the losing side. The enemy team had two experienced captains with lots of experienced crew members whereas we had a moderately experienced and a totally new player as captains. I could have switched sides before the match, but I decided to stay on the losing side partly because I did not care that seriously about the outcome, and partly because I hoped to gain some xp in spite of being in the obviously weaker team.

During the match I tried to be as good an engineer as possible, I gave advice to the new captain, I rebuilt lots of stuff, chem sprayed, did all I could to help the situation (forgot to mention that we had 2 gunners on the ship and I did not manage to convince any of them to switch, in fact nobody listened to me on the team throughout the whole match). So I did my best as an only engineer, ran around a lot, but we lost 5-0 due to our team setups.

At the end I got 200 xp and I thought that it really wasn't worth staying on that side anymore, so I moved on.

In the next round I jumped into a match again where MM placed me on the obvious winning side. Again, I could tell from the start that we would be the winners. I kept sightseeing throughout the match as an engineer, because the enemy did not even care to shoot back, and at the end I got almost 2000 xp.

I think staying on a weaker side and doing lots of repairs should be more rewarded by the system than winning 5-0 just because you happen to be on the more experienced team. I realize this is difficult to adjust, but I'd agree with CitizenFry that the current xp reward system does not reflect your individual achievements in matches.

Offline awkm

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Re: XP system seems wonky
« Reply #4 on: October 24, 2014, 11:13:56 am »
Every match that is won will earn 1000 xp.  Lost matches also reward xp but this number decays as you level up higher.  At the highest levels, you will earn little to no xp for losing a match.  If the Matchmaker is doing its job then each team should have a similar Matchmaking Rating and prevent drastic stomping.  Under low population circumstances, we can't guarantee that matches are balanced well.  There is only a loose correlation between level and MMR. But again, Matchmaker is only looking at your hidden MMR when putting together a Matchmade Lobby.  The goal is to ensure that both teams have similar chances of winning.  We've made a lot of concessions to accommodate players who want more freedom, like what was available in match list, and allow people to swap slots freely.  However, this breaks the balance that Matchmaker tried to enforce.  If needed, we can make this more strict.

Bonus experience given during a match is based on the actions you perform.  The actions that are being counted are only for the class that you are currently playing as (the stuff that is shown at Match End Screen).  E.g. if you are an Engineer, rebuilding will reward you bonus xp but killing enemies will not.  The total bonus xp is clamped to prevent xp grinding.

Both cases sound mostly accurate.  However, it does seem like there is something unusual with bonus xp, especially in Andika's two cases.  Both the Matchmaking System and XP System are new and despite this many players enjoy their functionality.  This isn't to say that they're perfect.  We'll be looking at ways to improve both systems to prevent stacking and make earning xp better. 

We can definitely:

- Add more XP for higher achievements
- Look into Bonus XP (Andika's case sounds a littl strange)
- Adjust Lost Match XP Reward Curve
- Improve Matchmaker

Offline CitizenFry

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Re: XP system seems wonky
« Reply #5 on: October 24, 2014, 02:53:33 pm »
Hmm, I was thinking about this overnight, and remembered that my "game 1" was a loss, and "game 2" was a win, so I guess my xp for game 1 was almost entirely for the one achievement I got, and my xp for game 2 was almost entirely for getting a win.

It seems a little odd that you would reduce the xp for losses as levels go up - the amount of xp for each level is going up anyway, so this seems like a double punishment. Feels bad that you can play a game and lose and get basically nothing for it.

Also, it seems like game duration or game type should play a role in how much xp is given for a win... 2v2 deathmatches, particularly on small maps like Duel at Dawn, can be over very quickly, while Crazy King often takes much much longer, particularly for 4v4.
« Last Edit: October 24, 2014, 02:57:23 pm by CitizenFry »

Offline Andika

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Re: XP system seems wonky
« Reply #6 on: October 25, 2014, 08:09:17 am »
Somehow the xp system should also take into consideration who you are winning or losing against.

(In theory matchmaker should make sure we do not end up with stacked lobbies, but there is simply too much human involvement and too small playerbase for it to work properly. And well, if you restrict the system more, it will ruin the healthy amount of flexibility this game still has and should have.)

Naturally, matches won should give you more xp than matches lost, but if those matches were won against players much lower in levels than the average of your team, then there should at least be some xp penalty involved when calculating the final points. There simply needs to be an inbuilt reason or reward why players would want to balance teams and stay on the weaker side even if they recognize it as the weaker side. And this reason should not be the goodwill of people, nor the promise of a good game, but something that has to do with levelling or xp. The real xp achievement recognized by the game should be the case when you beat people whose average levels are at around your level (eg. plus/minus 10 levels) rather than beating whoever who happens to be around. When beating people whose average level is much lower than yours, the game should reward little xp. People would be more willing to scramble if having balanced teams meant more xp at the end. Again, the problem with this system is the small playerbase, eg. some of us tend to play at times when there aren't enough players with the same levels to fight.

As long as winning earns you 1k xp no matter what whereas losing will earn only around a couple of hundreds, no player in their right mind will stay on an obvious losing side for too long.

With my two matches, I do remember unlocking an achievement during the high xp one, which might explain at least partly why xp was higher, but other than that, I also remember fixing nothing but a few engines that the captain damaged with tools.

Offline Sprayer

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Re: XP system seems wonky
« Reply #7 on: October 25, 2014, 11:11:40 am »
So doing repairs (as opposed to rebuilds) and keeping stuff chemed as engineer doesn't award bonus xp?

Offline sparklerfish

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Re: XP system seems wonky
« Reply #8 on: October 25, 2014, 01:57:13 pm »
So doing repairs (as opposed to rebuilds) and keeping stuff chemed as engineer doesn't award bonus xp?

Apparently not.  You only get rewarded for allowing things to break and catch on fire, not for preventing it from happening.

Offline Hoja Lateralus

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Re: XP system seems wonky
« Reply #9 on: October 25, 2014, 07:21:27 pm »
Also the problem with the current system is - I can be the greatest engineer ever but with captain lvl3 I will still loose - and it will count as my fail to the Matchmaker.

So doing repairs (as opposed to rebuilds) and keeping stuff chemed as engineer doesn't award bonus xp?

Apparently not.  You only get rewarded for allowing things to break and catch on fire, not for preventing it from happening.

Wow. Just wow.
If you put it that way - it is incredibly stupid.


Offline shaelyn

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Re: XP system seems wonky
« Reply #10 on: October 27, 2014, 10:56:49 pm »
yeah that's definitely a thing.  I mentioned it before, I work really well with a captain that gives a lot of direction.  and since the pilots on my friends list do so, and I fly a lot with them, I'm sure my MMR is really high from it...but with a quiet captain, if the roles aren't divided well, the whole ship kinda flounders.  ...and if I try to pilot myself, I lose to novices...  XD
« Last Edit: October 27, 2014, 11:03:26 pm by shaelyn »

Offline Richard LeMoon

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Re: XP system seems wonky
« Reply #11 on: October 28, 2014, 12:26:29 pm »
What happens with XP if you leave a match before it ends?

Offline Liva

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Re: XP system seems wonky
« Reply #12 on: October 28, 2014, 03:45:06 pm »
Also the problem with the current system is - I can be the greatest engineer ever but with captain lvl3 I will still loose - and it will count as my fail to the Matchmaker.

So doing repairs (as opposed to rebuilds) and keeping stuff chemed as engineer doesn't award bonus xp?

Apparently not.  You only get rewarded for allowing things to break and catch on fire, not for preventing it from happening.

Wow. Just wow.
If you put it that way - it is incredibly stupid.

I also found this problem. After a good game on Pyramidion, during which I was constantly on the move, doing repairs and keeping things chem sprayed. I even managed to shoot enemies, and not because my job was so easy but because I had short opportunities to. Even our gunner praised me to be efficient. But what did I get? One rebuild and next to no exp.

Offline sparklerfish

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Re: XP system seems wonky
« Reply #13 on: October 28, 2014, 03:51:05 pm »
I'd also like to see gunners get experience from repairing and engineers getting experience from gunning.  Gungineering is just as important as rebuilding the hull, and it's often the engineer that is expected to make the kill shots -- and with many builds, you don't have a gunner at all, so NOBODY is being rewarded for any of the damage you output, except maybe the pilot?  The roles aren't so cut-and-dry as "engineers repair, gunners shoot" (a very newbie mentality, which is why you get novice ships with extra gunners or being surprised at builds that are 3 engineers) and you should be rewarded for everything you do to help the ship regardless of what symbol is next to your name.

Offline sparklerfish

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Re: XP system seems wonky
« Reply #14 on: October 31, 2014, 03:39:20 pm »
So I brought up engineers getting XP for gunning-related things and vice-versa in the fireside chat today and they like the idea and are noting it as something to think about.  Hopefully it pans out!