White Acute Module availability outside of 2xp

[bhoowy]

Some of us like to level at a slower pace - a solution often being suggested is to use White Acute Module. However, the vendor is not available outside the Double XP Event. Please add this vendor outside the event and perhaps add the vendor to starter planets as well?

Bonus points if you also introduce a Black Acute Module, which would:

• Reduce XP gain roughly to "vanilla" level
• Ignore event XP bonus
• Ignore the guild  XP bonus
• Ignore subscriber XP bonus
• Ignore all Legacy XP bonuses

Thanks.

Edited May 23, 2023 by bhoowy

[Goreshaga]

Not something i'd personally use as i like leveling faster, but i'm definitely for players having options to play the way they want when it doesn't affect my playstyle, so i'm all for it.

[Balameb]

4 hours ago, bhoowy said:

Bonus points if you also introduce a Black Acute Module, which would:

• Reduce XP gain roughly to "vanilla" level
• Ignore event XP bonus
• Ignore the guild  XP bonus
• Ignore subscriber XP bonus
• Ignore all Legacy XP bonuses

Unless they were to implement individual modules for each, i see a problem adding all of those together. Particularly the first about reducing gain (as in not the bonuses).

If you remove all bonuses is one thing, but reducing base gain will force to grind too much outside class story.

I recently tried a toon while being f2p (no rest exp) but still using base guild bonus (from guild lvl, no extra perks) and general exp bonus items. By doing only class story you can't keep up with planets levels.

[bhoowy]

Well, the whole point is that it would make the game feel closer to what it was at the launch with minimal effort. For levelling would do the side content and story flashpoints. Though you may have a point, I think all bonus series were relegated to max-level content, right?

This issue comes up a lot on the forums. Making WAM generally available is the simplest solution. Adding a more potent version of it is the next best thing we could realistically expect.

[SteveTheCynic]

1 hour ago, bhoowy said:

with minimal effort

Maybe, maybe not.  They'd need to rework all the missions to give roughly their "vanilla" level on a condition (do you have the BAM), which would mean extra code to grant the right XP (with-BAM versus without-BAM), and they'd need to invent "roughly vanilla" amounts for all missions released on or after 2.0.

 

1 hour ago, Balameb said:

I recently tried a toon while being f2p (no rest exp) but still using base guild bonus (from guild lvl, no extra perks) and general exp bonus items. By doing only class story you can't keep up with planets levels.

That's actually intended.  To keep up, you have to do, as a minimum above the class story, the purple-triangle <Story Arc: Planetname> missions on all planets where they exist, starting with Coru and DK.

Edited May 23, 2023 by SteveTheCynic

[bhoowy]

13 hours ago, SteveTheCynic said:

Maybe, maybe not.  They'd need to rework all the missions to give roughly their "vanilla" level on a condition (do you have the BAM), which would mean extra code to grant the right XP (with-BAM versus without-BAM), and they'd need to invent "roughly vanilla" amounts for all missions released on or after 2.0.

It could be as simple as adding a multiplier to incoming XP. For example, on the brand new character on a brand new F2P account without any XP bonuses, I got to level 18 after finishing Korriban and The Black Talon FP. Since at this point "ideal" level would be around 10, we could do 10/18 = 0.55.

Pseudocode:

function multiplier() {
	if (hasBlackAcuteModule) { return 0.55 }
	if (hasWhiteAcuteModule) { return guildBonus + legacyBonus + boostBonus }
	return guildBonus + legacyBonus + boostBonus + eventBonus
}

function experience(incoming) {
	return incoming * multiplier()
}

This is just me speculating. I do not know how easy or complex it is in the game engine. But it could be just a one-liner. Deriving a good enough multiplier is pretty simple, as I showed above.

Edited May 24, 2023 by bhoowy

[SteveTheCynic]

It's unlikely to be a one-liner because the XP required for each level rises, and probably (I haven't looked) not in a uniform manner.  (So from 1 to 10 versus 1 to 18 would not be 55%; but a smaller percentage since the XP from 1 to 10 is not 55% of the XP from 1 to 18, which would get rapidly painful at higher levels.)

3 hours ago, bhoowy said:

Deriving a good enough multiplier is pretty simple, as I showed above.

Maybe, as hinted above by the analysis based on XP-required-per-level.  It's complicated further by the increase in XP per kill, and the smaller differences between XP-required on the higher planets.

So no, a single figure based on dividing the level numbers themselves (it should be 9/17 rather than 10/18, since you start already at level 1, so you gain 9-vs-17 instead of 10-vs-18 levels) is not good enough for higher levels.

That sort of analysis is why it *suddenly* gets difficult to get right, or even "good enough".

[bhoowy]

24 minutes ago, SteveTheCynic said:

That sort of analysis is why it *suddenly* gets difficult to get right, or even "good enough".

It does not need to be perfect and no sense in overcomplicating. After finishing DK 0.55 ratio still holds true. As NPCs and missions give more XP, the XP requirement for each level also grows. Ultimately only the devs know how their game works internally; we can only speculate.

Edited May 24, 2023 by bhoowy

[SteveTheCynic]

1 minute ago, bhoowy said:

It does not need to be perfect

Correct.

1 minute ago, bhoowy said:

and no sense in overcomplicating.

Correct.

However, there's no sense in *undercomplicating* either.  At the very least, the multiplier should be based on the balance between XP-required-to-level and XP-earned-at-level, which means that a single constant value based strictly on the player's level number is not probably good enough.  (Think about what it should be to produce level 16 or so at the end of DK/Coru compared to the number of levels we can currently gain on those planets...  Pretty sure that 0.55 is wrong based on your calculation schema.)

[bhoowy]

You are correct; my assumption that one multiplier will work for the whole 1 to max journey is perhaps optimistic. There are so many sources of XP that it is impossible to prime the player's level to be in tune with their questing. Also, anything beyond class stories' levelling is all over the place and likely with many, many complications. E.g. later expansion, the content was designed with fast levelling in mind.

This is why I think having a single, simple multiplier is probably the best. It just needs to prevent over levelling. Since it is an optional item, if a player feels they fell too far behind - they can simply take it off and run some FPs to catch up.

 

Edited May 24, 2023 by bhoowy