Game Mechanics: Pets should perhaps steal xp even in groups if they do 50%+ damage

[Dolalin]

A careful reading of this dev post by Rich Waters in 2002 suggests that pets should steal xp even in groups if they do 50%+ damage to the mobs:

How is this different than the old way for non-Dire Charmed pets?

In the old scheme, if a pet did more than half of the damage to a monster, it took half the experience reward. In the new scheme, pets take zero experience unless no player does damage. If no player does any damage, then the pet takes 75% of the experience reward.

This means that it's much easier to make sure a pet doesn't take any experience from you or your group. In most situations where a pet would have taken half the experience before, it now takes no experience at all.

http://everquest.allakhazam.com/story.html?story=960

Now I'm not 100% sure about this and there might be posts that I'm not aware of that are a bit clearer. Feel free to chime in if you know any, I will keep looking as I'm able.

[Dolalin]

Thread asking the same question as me:

https://groups.google.com/d/topic/al...u8I/discussion

Long newsgroup thread on the topic:

https://groups.google.com/d/topic/al...kvY/discussion

Still not definitive.

[Dolalin]

Actually there's more to that second thread than meets the eye. One post in particular has some very good leads:

9/12/00

Indebek wrote:
> I have heard the 1% answer nearly as often as the 50% answer. I am much
> more inclined to believe this answer. It's the kind of hard coded fix
> Verant would apply to there code base to keep pet casters from being shunned
> by everyone else. It also seems to be the more accurate from my personal
> experience, but again where does this rumor come from? Is there any data to
> support this?

The 1% figure was a comment from Abashi on the official website forums some
months back, in response to ShowEQ results that were running contrary to other
Verant comments at the time. The value is good, but only because they heavily
qualified it. The argument went along the lines that if you had a full group,
all participating, then the odds that the pet would out damage the entire group
as a whole was small, about 1%. Abashi maintained that each individual's damage
was compared only to the group's aggregate damage. So, in a highly unique
situation, the 1% holds.

On the otherhand, in the average group where not everyone is hitting all the
time (except the pets), it's easy for a pet to often tote up the highest damage
score. In that case, it does indeed (according to ShowEQ) get a much larger
share of the experience than 1%.

As to the "Killing Blow" theory, that's a by-product of how damage in a fight is
tracked. Verant has let information pass (most notably when discussing Ranger
aggro problems) that indicates that the tracking of damage inflicted upon a MOB
in a battle, a tally done by the system, is limited to the last few seconds.
That is, it doesn't have a long memory of who inflicted how much.

Makes sense, considering the system has to be adaptable for fights ranging from
a few seconds up to minutes in length. So, if a Mage burns early and hard, and
the fight is over quickly, the Mage's damage will be well represented in the
damage tracking system. Same if a Mage burns moderately, but spreads it over
the length of the fight.

However, if a Mage burns only at the beginning of a battle, even doing 50%+ of
the damage, in a long fight the damage from the pet will predominate in the
systems "memory", the pet will be seen as having done the most damage, and the
pet will get a larger share of the experience. That's why the "Killing Blow"
myth is so hard to test and substantiate or disprove -- the actual timing of the
delivery of the damage makes all the difference. ShowEQ showed that, for a
player doing damage quickly throughout a fight, there was no "Killing Blow"
award. Just to make it more confusing, Verant itself had been hinting there was
such a bonus, till ShowEQ showed it didn't exist. Verant then back tracked with
more double-speak and hand-waving, just like in the first question about pets
and experience.

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt....Y/jEq_2PAhUXoJ

Looks like I need to try to find that Abashi post and more of this ShowEQ stuff.

[Dolalin]

Good post by Sam Schlansky here, I may be onto something.

02/11/00

>David Schrank <sch...@cisco.com> wrote
>> At level 16 I hated my mage. Lately I have been playing with a
>> few level 49-50
>> mages. Our major problem is the pets take half the exp. We tried
>> out damaging
>> them but wasent worth the down time. Easier to debuff the
>> mobs/buff the pets. Mage will fireshield and do her 800 burn when fom.
>> Almost no down time.
>> Their pet seems compriable to level 50 hybrid thats not casting.
>
>Hence, you just group with a second Mage/Necro. That way you get
>*identical* experience per kill (actually 2.5% more with the
>bonus) and kill twice as fast!
If *either* pet does the majority of the damage, all PC's will get half the
experience plus the grouping bonus.

For example, on a hypothetical level 30 mob with 2000 HP, which normally gives
67500 XP, the grouping bonus is 1350XP for a two person group. (data taken from
a ShowEQ user on casters realm)...

---Case 1---
Pet 1 does 600 damage.
Pet 2 does 400 damage.
Magician nukes for 450 damage.
Magician nukes for 400 damage.
Damage shields do 300 damage.

Both magicians get 17212 XP.

---Case 2---
Pet 1 does 600 damage.
Pet 2 does 400 damage.
Magician 1 nukes for 900 damage.
Magician 2 doesn't nuke.
Damage shields do 100 damage.

Both magicians get 34425 XP.

Group aggregate damage is *not* in, as you can see from the above examples. All
that matters is WITHIN THE GROUP, who does the most damage-- if it's a pet, you
lose half the XP.

Pets *do* suck XP in a group. Pets *do* suck xp when soloing. However in *both*
cases, if you outnuke your pet you (or your group) will get FULL xp. Hence if
played correctly there is zero (ZERO) penalty to using a pet in either grouping
OR soloing.

If you're forced to let your pet do over 50% of the damage while soloing (a
necromancer fear pet kiting, for example) think to yourself-- do you kill mobs
twice as fast using this tactic? It takes much less mana and presents less
risk, but does it take HALF as much mana and present HALF the risk? That's a
question you'll have to answer for yourself.

Luckily both shamen and magicians can easily nuke and outdamage their pets. A
necromancer really doesn't have that option. Until level 44, they have to stack
DoTs.

Sam

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https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt....I/br41DOg-0WQJ

Looks like there was another factor in play too during classic, there was a hate list limit of 8, which resulted in strange happenings like a lone 36 bard outdamaging an entire group of low 40s and KSing mobs. Would have impacted stuff like this as well. Imagine a full group with 3 or 4 pets. The pets are quite likely to be bumping the PCs off the hate list and stealing xp more often I'd wager.

02/14/00

Sergey Dashevskiy <xi...@tcimet.net> wrote in message
news:MPG.1311ed25372b90c19896d1@news.msu.edu...

>
> I'm not quite sure it's quite about outdamaging the pet (or maybe I'm
> just talking about a totally different thing, and then I'll shut up). It
> somehow also factors in the number of hits.
> As an example: yesterday I decided to max out my piercing skill and I
> didn't have enough time to actually do that while I get experience. So I
> got 2 FS daggers, went to Sol B and asked a group there if I could
> practince on their targets. They pull one GK, I start my haste song (+
> 20% attack speed) and start stabbing the said kobold. Me being a lowly
> level 36 (vs a full group of 35-42 with pets) I was taking about every
> other kill until I figured out what's wrong, apologised and left. They
> were a bit surprised at that as well, as they knew there was no chance
> in hell I could possibly even come close to outdamaging them

That's not the number of hits; that's the hate list overflow bug rearing its
ugly head. Since there were more than 8 damage sources, you kept blowing
each other off the list, so your rapid-fire 10 damage pierces were actually
the biggest damage dealers on it.

Brudo (E'ci)
Loredaeron (E'ci)

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt....I/Cpy-TI7wZS8J

[Valion]

"That's not the number of hits; that's the hate list overflow bug"
Sounds interesting should make ks'ing mobs easier for those inclined to do so, just like the bard does here.
Wizards used to ks high target mobs with Ice Comet back in the day out damaging whole groups.

Careful what you wish for.

[Dolalin]

This is still very incomplete, I haven't found a definitive answer yet. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[derpcake2]

Are you going to ask for classic pet melee damage / attack delay also, or are you just going to keep posting the negatives only?

This kind of selective feedback is flat out disruptive, if staff will act on it, I'll gladly point out some of the stuff you seem to be missing, despite your very extensive research.

The the thread you posted multiple people report pets quadding for 58. Do they on green/teal, or will you be making a thread on that?

[Jimjam]

Those things have already been reported (pet melee damage). New bug reports are for bugs that haven't already been reported.

You're not meant to fill the forum with dozens of threads reporting the same bug. See the stickies.

If there are unreported bugs you are aware of please gather evidence and report.

Generally I find researching one bug leads to a whole slew of other bugs. That seems to be what has happened here.

[Dolalin]

So I've come across this post from Absor replying to Mage Compendium question about pets and xp in groups.

Note that this is before the changes to Pet XP were proposed to deal with Dire Charm etc (those were announced in June 2002).

posted 03-11-2002 10:16 AM

Hello.
I have an update, rather a correction, on one of the answers to the questions that the Mage Compendium folks sent in.

I was just informed by Scott Hartsman that I made a mistake about the pet experience thing. Pets only take experience from a group if they outdamage the entire group. If they do, then they gain a share as if they were a group member. If they do not, they take no experience at all.

This is how it's been working the whole time, and it makes a lot more sense. I'm sorry for the mistake.

Alan

http://web.archive.org/web/200308191...ML/000514.html

This is consistent with the newsgroup posts up above.

It seems that after January 2000 or so, Verant changed the network protocol to only send fractions of the XP bar instead of raw XP numbers data, which accounts for the dearth of ShowEQ data from after that time.

[Dolalin]

More to back up the above:

Pets no longer take experience in most situations

In the past, pets would take a full share of experience if they did the most damage to a creature. We've changed this rule as follows -

* Pets take ZERO experience from a creature, unless no player does damage to that creature.
* Pets take 75% of the experience from a creature - if no player does damage to that creature.

This means that your pet takes no experience from you or your group unless your pet kills a monster with no help from players. As long as you or your groupmates do damage to a monster, your pet will take ZERO experience.

http://everquest.allakhazam.com/story.html?story=943

Again, crucially, this describes the situation that existed *before* all the Pet XP changes that were subsequently put in. It should be relevant to how things worked in the classic era.