Basically, in FT there is a huge difference in how combat happens among the player and the monsters, since the player needs to have a 4-5 point better dexterity than monsters, to hit them and avoid being hit by them; then a damage strong enough to overcome monsters' armor value by a significant extent. With just one of those values which is inadequate, each faction may rely only on critical hits to damage the foe.
Since a critical hits always hits and always deals damage, a wise player will always try to level up in order to have an adequate dexterity but will have no interest in pumping his own armor score.
Monsters may avoid this problem thanks to their impressive strength and HPs, which allow them to endure an fight (including damage from magic) long enough to represent a menace even only landing critical hits and each of their skill scores is important.
This is important because I have tried 2 ways to re-calculate the monsters XP (see the attached file):
- 1: by calculating their average score, or their total score (the arithmetic mean or the sum of their values) and then trying to add multipliers to give enough XPs to be coherent with the actual player's level progression chart.
- 2: by calculating a bonus coming from each single of their stats and HP, because the mean of their stats was somehow confusing eg when I found weak monsters with A LOT of HPs or ones with very low dexterity but outstanding scores OR others with amazing dexterity but lower values.
In this method, I have given a bonus or penalty to each skill score, divided by range, and then I have summed them. Eg: skill scores from 0 to 5 give 1/4 of their value to determine the XP give by a monsters, the ones from 6 to 10 give 1/2, the ones from 11 to 15 give "x 1", the ones from 16 to 20 give "x 2,5", the ones from 21 to 25 give "x 3,5" and so on.
So, a white wolf (Dmg 2, Arm 0, Dex 1, HP 20) would have:
Dmg 2 * 1/4
Arm 0 * 1/4
Dex 1 *1/4
HP 20/20 (have randomly chose to divide each monster's HP per 20, and to add that value as a bonus)
And the total was XP 2, as in the original game.
II did this to reflect the game mechanics, because in this game evebn small numbers make a huge difference.
The first method has been of great help to identify the discrepancies among monsters which have a very similar stats but give a totally wrong number of XPs.
This second method worked pretty nicely as well, till I reached the monsters with very high Damage score, like enemy archers or spellcasters: archers usually give an outstanding superior quantity of XPs, even much greater than monsters with similar stats, probably just because they are "ranged" units with faster attack rate, while spellcasters give a ridiculously less amount since they often have a relatively weak armor or HPs. But this is practically insignificant, since they also have amazing dexterity and damage and are ranged, so they are much more dangerous than monsters with overall more balanced stats.
In addition, I had to insert a modifier to increase the given XPs since they are too few in comparison with the actual player level up chart.
The other very important thing is that I have found like a "hole", a group of creatures which are totally messy, that are the ones that go from average score of 19 to 26, since they usually give too few experience for their stats; then there is a like a huge jump after the Blood Mummy, since the next foe is the blue knight that is MUCH stronger and there is no creature to kill in the meantime that may work like an "XP bridge".
Among the totally wrong creatures, here are some samples:
(name, DAMAGE - ARMOR - DEXTERITY - HP - XP - MEDIUM SCORE)
Black Knight 16 23 9 400 100 16,0
Red Cape Knight 19 27 11 800 1.000 19,0
Bandit Archer 20 20 18 1.000 9.000 19,3
Brown Wolf 29 24 9 1.000 80 20,7
As you can see, the brown wolf is overall stronger than the bandit archer but the archer gives more than 100 times the XPs than the wolf. Also the other creatures are pretty close in values but not in XPs.
Another sample is given by the white dragon, that is stronger than the ghost archers and still provide LESS experience.
Or, even more, the mages and teh blue-hat mushyman:
(name, DAMAGE - ARMOR - DEXTERITY - HP - XP - MEDIUM SCORE)
Blue-hat mushyman 2.500 75 165 99.000 1.400.000 913,3
Pink Mage 4.200 60 90 10.000 110.000 1.450,0
Spectre Wizard 8.000 25 185 20.000 275.000 2.736,7
The spectre wizard is much stronger than the mushyman and still provides only 275.000 XPs rather than 1.400.000 just because weaker in armor and HPs, even if with that dexterity and being a ranged unit, he may instantly kill a whole party of adventurer at distance without even being scratched.
Last but not least, the 0,1% drop rate is totally useless and frustrating, worthy of one of those old school Japanese games where you had to repeat the same actions like forever to achieve very small results.
THank you Arachnia for helping to explain
Arachnia wrote:The statistics are as follows:
With a drop probability of 0.1% (= 0.001), you can calculate the chance P, that the item drops at least once after having N monsters killed.
Here the outcome:
N = 1000 ; P = 63.23%
N = 1500 ; P = 77.7%
N = 2000 ; P = 86.48%
N = 2500 ; P = 91.8%
To reach P = 99%, you need at least 4600 kills.
... anyway, most of what you've talked about here really isn't as applicable in the mmo simply because of the dynamics between multiple players... the nature of grinding on monsters which are too strong is very different when you have high level players present. As it stands, there are "good" and "bad" monsters to kill. (Some, like brown wolf are very bad, but part of quest) Your recommendation would essentially make all of them good, which reduces gameplay... said another way: if there is no option to make a bad decision, there is no satisfaction in making a good one. Also, the fact that you need different character builds to successfully kill different monsters is a pretty new thing in FT, and I'm very happy with it...again it promotes diversity in mmo