Dungeon XP gain system incentivises Gatekeeping

WoW Classic Cataclysm Classic Discussion
1

Hi there folks.
Im recently leveling an alt again. I do that all the time, i like it.
As always, together with a friend, and we always play a combo of a carry + heal.
Usually stuff like warrior+Heal or Pally + heal (meaning i will end up having 3 pallys 2 warris after this leveling run).

And i once again picked up an issue i always had whilst leveling:
Distribution of Experience in dungeons.

Basically, depending on your comp, having more than 2 or 3 players for a dungeon is actively nerfing the experience gain for yourself, besides of obviously nerfing the amount of loot you get (cloth / disenchant mats, it adds up).

During our recent run we did not recognize it as an issue that much, since it was before JJ, so during Vanilla content we barely even saw anyone in LFG, so leveling as a 2man Team was not even a choice, but rather a given.
But since we hit Outlands yesterday, and JJ also got active again, we couldÂŽve had loads of people to join our little Team for Outland Dungeons - but we had to decline them, since after we testet it a few times it once again showed, that even adding a single person is basically a self griefing messure - your XP/hour will decrease with each player added.
We had one exception in Manatombs, where a really well performing DK managed to hold the XP/hour up to the same level we had when we did it as a 2 man team - but that was mainly influenced by the warrior playing full prot for better CC in Tombs, instead of UA.

Also a Fun sidenote: Some people pay 150g/run for getting carried through hellfire dungeons.

So what is my issue with all that ?

-Doing a dungeon with more than 2-3 people (depending on classes and spec) is a severe downgrade on your XP/Loot gain
=> This leads to the rational decicion of not taking more people inside your group
=> This is incentivising Gatekeeping
=>It gets worse due to the fact that the best performing comps for downsized dungeon runs always contain a “heal” and a “tank”, thus reduzing the amount of heals and tanks available for others to form a group with.

I honestly would actually prefer to play as a 5man comp. But as a human being, knowing that something would be negative to my personal gain, leads to me not doing it (unless it involves my community, which is not the case in doing dungeon runs with people i dont know)

Adjusting the Dungeon XP by buffing the amount gained for having more players would be a really helpfull move in the right direction - giving players a motivation for actually playing a Dungeon with a full group.

2

Huh? I was getting 4K per elite mob and 6k per boss in a full group. That’s with rested xp, 2 heirlooms and JJ.

There is no difference from pre patch JJ except for the fact that we get 20% more from heirlooms. The difference you’ll see in Xp loss is only when you bring a much higher level player into your run.

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3

Huh? I guess you did not read my post.

Yeah, i did not in any way claim that there is a difference.

No, the difference is that i lose XP/kill for players i add to my group. That has nothing to do with them being a higher level, that is how the XP distribution in groups work.
If you are alone, you get the most xp, if you are 2 player both get around 50% of what you would get alone, if you are 3 people all 3 get around 35% of what you would get alone.
There is an added bonus on XP for every player from 3 players and up, but what im talking about that unless the extra players bring so much more speed into your run, you still get a net loss on XP/Hour for adding players, since the added bonus is just not doing much anymore.

4

Yes, you will get less per person, but with 5 people within your level range, it is the ‘normal’ xp amount expected.

You can’t argue that running solo or less nets you more (yes it does) because it is expected for you to gain x amount with a full group. That you must contend with.

I’ve generally run 4 man groups because it nets higher xp. I can’t argue with blizzard because of this fact. It’s harder with less and everything is increased (gold etc).

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5

Thanks for the summary of my post.

But i would strongly disagree that i must contend with that. Its incentivising degen behaviour - min maxing of XP/Hour by directly tackling basic human insticts of straving for efficiency, and could be easily solved by adjusting XP bonus for groups.

6

It’s as if you argued that it’s unfair to raid with a full group because you get way more gold running a raid with half the people.

It’s the exact argument you’re claiming. The fact that you get more of something doing it with less than it was intended is irrelevant.

Not to mention the fact the dungeon runs aren’t really created to ‘level’ a player regardless of whether a player doing so thinks it is. It just happens to grant xp, a fair amount and a very gracious amount with Joyous Journeys.

There’s also this thing called questing


3 Likes
7

Nope. Thats not what i argued. Please keep this thread Strawman free.

Look, i generally agree with you. Its understandable that you get more if you do it with less.
My problem is that its
a) doubly rewarding. You get more loot, and more XP/hour
b) leading to purposely not adding others to your group. Its excluding, and the system itself incentivises it.

which suffers from similar problems tbh. Questing as a group is normally slower and more tedious.
-Less xp efficiency on killquests
-Most lootquests drive you insane
-Even quests that actively PUNISH the players for group play (like the quest in WPL where you have to burn down the tent and raise the banner, its not groupwide and you have to wait for a tent “respawn” for every player in a group
 oh god just thinking about this makes me cry)

8

If you’re so focused on min/maxing xp gains that you’ll dismiss running as a full party, you do you.

I’ve stopped trying to understand people that want to min/max the fun out of a game,

5 Likes
9

But you won’t ever do it faster with less people. You can with no healer, but that really depends upon a lot of other things.

I just don’t agree with your assumptions related to gaining xp from 5 mans. They weren’t intended to be leveling instances. What is fair or not in terms of xp is neglecting the amount of xp gained by questing, which by the way, is meant to level players.

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10

So, if we look at a basic example of how experience works in World of Warcraft, we’ll see:

1 Person - 100% of experience
2 People - 50% of experience
3 People - 39% of experience
4 People - 33% of experience
5 People - 28% of experience

Realistically speaking, comparing a two-man group to a five-man group, you’ll be sacrificing roughly 22% of the experience - so, using a mob worth 1,000 Experience, you’ll be getting roughly 500 exp for duo, and 280 exp for 5-man.

The reality of this is that you will ALWAYS be slower at killing mobs with less party members. So, really, your exp per hour will be lower the less people in your group.

For example, if it takes you 10 seconds to kill one mob, and you gain 500 experience from that, you’ll be looking at what, 50xp per second? But with three additional party members, that time may dip down to 3 seconds, granting 93 exp per second.

4 Likes
11

Have you ever had a group of UA warrior / ret pally + heal for leveling in dungeons ?
You will be “slower”, but its irrelevant.
In Sethekk you get to lockout times with 2 people. Same in Bota.
Its weird wotlk mechanics like UA warrior dealing 4k dps
at lvl 68.

That would be true if
-Dps and killspeed are linear and similar for everyone and every mob
-There is an unlimited supply of mobs / no lockouts
-the ratio between killspeed increase and basic time (literally the time you need to move through the dungeon) would be not a thing.
Botanica for example is the most densly packed dungeon for quick leveling available. If you do a quick run, where 2 people are enough for, you can do a dungeon run in around 10-12 minutes.
Now explain how your efficiency goes up with more people added.

That i agree on in general.
But if faster =/= more efficient, you are still faster in leveling.
Because levelspeed = XP/Hour

12

It’s simple, really:

If we’re focusing on a Warrior with the UA build - what are they relying on? Mitigation, right? For them to complete efficient pulls, what do they need?

If we take a Warrior (level 68) in questing gear (greens and blues) they typically won’t be achieving high levels of mitigation, correct? They won’t be reaching high levels of Block Value, either. The problem? If they’re not mitigating incoming damage, guess what doesn’t proc? Revenge.

Speed is completely relevant to this discussion.

Again, very basic math here


If we both use the same build, rotation, and get the same amount of critical strikes, damage, etc., as a Warrior, and kill an enemy granting 1,000 experience; you being by yourself and taking 30 seconds, and me with another DPS, taking 10 seconds, my exp per hour will be higher than yours, despite having someone else with me.

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13

Questing is loads better than dungeons. Even questing in northrend versus having someone boost HoS can’t compete
 I guess unless you’re pulling giant packs of like 50 mobs.

With that in mind, dungeons are for loot and fun, not min/max. That’s just how it plays out.

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14

You’re missing out on party bonus exp and the improved speed from more dps.

I think i’d need to see some actual numbers from your claims of hurting your overall Xp/Hour.

If I’m clearing a dungeon in 8-11min with a full party vs 30min with 2 people with the way xp scaling and party bonus work I’m not seeing how it is mathematically possible for your XP/Hour to be lower.

Also your understanding of what “Gatekeeping” is doesn’t really line up with the common definition. It seems you’re the only one “Gatekeeping” anything.

With heirlooms and Joyous Journey you probably could have hit lvl cap with all the time you just wasted on the forums on this post.

You invented a problem that doesn’t exist for yourself.

1 Like
15

The exp breakdown is a bit dumb. I can get a full bar at 30 from 20 minutes in Gnomer as a tank solo.

But add 1 person and it gets cut in half.

100/50/33/25 should be 100/60/40/37. Group formation should be incentivzed in a MMO.

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Except that doesn’t work since the maximum number of party members is 5, not 4.

Edit: And given your proposed change, you’re losing 20% per member until the fourth, when you lose only 3%
?

17

First: Block Value is not a stat that has any influence on revenge procs whatsoever. What you mean is block rating.

I would call that a problem of “learn to play”

We did sethekk halls yesterday until lvl 70. Gear was a mixture of accountgear, R14 helmet from honor tokens, blue drops from dungeons (basically everything that is socketable => Expertise softcap, hitcap, every other socket into stamina/strength)

You just pull big enough to always have enough mobs to get revenge as often as possible. During shieldblock (every 40 seconds) you get 10 seconds of pure revenge spam. You never pause for a single mob, you always have multiple mobs to increase your revenge uptime.
Our killspeed allowed us to take 15minutes for a complete sethekk run.
Thats over a million xp/hour.

This is pure madness.

a) There is no DPS in existence that beats a UA warrior in DPS output in a normal dungeon run in leveling areas.
b) The hypothetical DPS you are talking about would need to deal TWICE the dmg of an UA WARRIOR. I mean what in the world ?
Not even a ret, the second best spec in the game for speedgrind in dungeons can even come close to that.

Dungeonleveling =/= endgame.
Theres a whole different “meta” if you®re interested in efficient gameplay.

I would 100% agree that based on your lack of knowledge it might be faster to level with 5 people in dungeons.
But i would also bet all my gold that i would beat your leveling speed with a 2 man comp over any 5 man comp you can imagine. Because that is the beauty of math, i outright know that its impossible to get fast enough in dungeons.

I did not even mention that besides 2 or 3 manning dungeons as i did mention in my OP, the pinnacle of xp gain is solo grinding dungeons. I left that out, because this actually involves having gear that is based on previous content raids etc. and not on gear that is basically obtainable by having a main character and low amounts of gold.

18

Have you even tried just enjoying the game? You sound like my old ex of a guild that I had to leave because they were way too sweaty about anything and everything.

2 Likes
19

No, I meant Block Value - as in their mitigation. You know, the amount of damage they can block? You know
 to stay alive?

Or that you should learn basic Warrior fundamentals.

20

I enjoy the game. A lot to be specific.
I would not play it otherwise, im not so special to do activitys i dont enjoy.

Have you even tried looking outside of the well you are living in ?
I have no problem with accepting and understanding that one might want to play the game slow.
I can understand all kinds of gameplays, even the ways i myself would never play.

I just dont understand how someone can honestly believe that just because someone is playing a different style, it is not enjoyable for them.