Real strength: badly under-geared characters know they are weaker
Level 80 characters, levelled mostly in battlegrounds, with low-level gear and badly outdated spells, thought themselves much stronger than they are and died against ordinary monsters. Their strength is now estimated more strictly: on the test server, 4 deaths instead of 10 with the same characters, without fewer monsters killed.
- Commit
- 29fb1b6
- Build
- Build success · Target worldserver
The finding
During the trials of the previous batch, deaths rose from 7 to 19. The cause: level 80 characters armed again or freed, but very weak, with gear around level 20 and 60 to 70 levels of training lag. Their strength was estimated as that of a level 64. So they engaged ordinary level 69 to 71 monsters, and died.
The fix
Gear and training lag now weigh more in real strength:
- a third of the gear lag, up to 25 levels;
- a quarter of the training lag, up to 20 levels.
For a well-equipped, up-to-date character, almost nothing changes. These are hot settings, applied without recompiling or restarting.
Checked on the test server
Two parallel 35-minute trials with 17 characters: the new version, against the same one with this setting.
- Deaths: 10 → 4, as many as with the old version (3 in each trial).
- Monsters killed: 26 → 26.
- Quest objectives and hunting: clearly more time spent working on them.
- A level 56 warlock kills as many quest monsters; a level 61 druid goes from 6 to 13 monsters killed.
Deployment
The setting is in place on the server. The autonomous players stay stopped.