Thread: 1.19 powerlevel guide

Originally Posted by Dyne

Not sure how it is now, but a few months ago, if there was a high level in your party, you got crap sp, and they get slightly higher sp. And then it was changed so the lower level gets more sp, and the higher level gets almost no sp. Not sure which came first. They keep switching things around, it's like they don't have testers with opinions, and prefer to use player outrage to get a good grasp on things.

I'm not sure what you're referring to, but the party bonus algorithm hasn't changed significantly since they switched to 8 person parties. It's basically Party-Bonus * Enemy-SP / Members-in-party. The bonus of course increases as the party size increases. The actual values for the bonus may have been tweaked a bit, but I don't believe it has changed significantly since the max party size got lowered.

The exploit you describe in the OP isn't all that different that what's possible now. Take for example a rank 40 enemy that give's 500 SP solo when you're R30.

I don't recall what the exact values for the party bonuses are, but lets assume that for 2 people it's 2x and for 3 people it's 2.8x. These values probably aren't exactly correct, but I think they're close enough for this example.

If a R30 pairs with a R50 and lets the R50 one-shot the above mentioned R40 enemy, the R30 player gets 250 SP (total SP is halved and they don't get any bonus because the rank difference is too large) - not bad considering they didn't do any work, but they can get even more.

If another R30 player is added into the party, then the R30 players both get 333 SP (the total SP is divided by 3, but the R30 players both get the the 2x bonus because they're within the appropriate level range of each other). It doesn't matter that neither of the R30 players are in the bonus range of the R50 player, they still get the 2 person bonus because they're in range of each other. If the 3 person bonus was 2.8, then by adding another R30 to the party (for a total of 3 R30s and 1 R50), then the SP for each rank R30 player would be 350 (2.8 * 500 / 4). The idea that adding leaches to a party can in some cases actually improve SP seems a bit bizarre, but unfortunately it's the current reality.

I guess my point with all this is that the exploits that are possible now aren't that different than the one you described. Also, the post on these changes states: "We will also be implementing adjustments to overall experience point rewards and the current party bonus algorithm." We'll have to see how things turn out, but I don't think we should be so sure that 1.19 will make these sorts of exploits easier.