Feldon UPDATE: This article has been superceded by an article at EQ2 ZAM which explains the bug. In short, with the exception of Recruit-a-Friend, current XP earning rates are being restored to the same levels as before Game Update 57.
So at Fan Faire, I overheard an EQ2 team member say of Recruit-a-Friend “That thing is so broken!” followed by a comment about it completely demolishing the XP curve. It seems the resolution to this situation was closer than we thought.
To figure out what was going on here, let’s break out the calculators.
If I have a Recruit-a-Friend bonus (+200%), Vitality bonus (+100%), XP potion (+55%), and five max level characters (+50%), all of these effects used to MULTIPLY. With these bonuses stacking, the XP earn rate could theoretically reach as much as 20 times normal XP.”
With today’s stealth fix in Game Update 57, XP bonuses still stack (including Refer-a-Friend), but are now Added together rather than being Multiplied. For instance, our bonuses above would add up (200% + 100% + 55% + 50%) to yield 405% bonus.
To help take some of the pain out of this change, all XP potions including Veteran Rewards and StationCash potions have had their values doubled. So our revised number bumps up to 460% bonus XP with all of those bonuses stacking. That’s still a healthy amount of XP, but not a game-breaking one.
If you’d like to read some EQ2 developer reasoning that went into this change, look no further than the “Hidden EXP Nerf? Looks that way…” thread on the EQ2 Forums.
As for XP rates being slow at certain level ranges, and players looking for any solution to try to make up huge AA deficits, that’s worthy of discussion too. Clearly, these are not where they should be, if players are resorting to parlour tricks to gain AAs and levels.
Some comments from SmokeJumper:
The XP curve is not different on EQ2X than EQII Live.
The XP for killing monsters and completing quests were not reduced at all, nor was the normal curve altered.
The only change we made was to reduce the effect that occurred when four or more stacked bonuses allowed ridiculously fast advancement.
If you’re playing with Vitality bonuses and XP potions, you will see no difference whatsoever.
and later:
We increased the potions so that they do *exactly* what they did before the change. No more, or less, powerful than they once were.
That makes sense, that also explains why it felt that I was earning AA at 5x the rate when they had the double XP and double AA weekend, because I guess I was 😉
Careful feldon there is little proof that it was ever multiplicative to begin with. Everything I had tested suggested it was not.
The AA bonuses on the other hand did multiply the bonus when you were converting.
i have 22 lvl 90 alts thanks to RAF mostly, this is really gonna hurt trying to get the last two to 90 🙁
suprised they did not notice and fix like this a LOT earlier, i mean the game has been out 5+ years now.
I was the last of my friends to join EQ2 so the RaF bonus was never something i could get without making my own 2nd account and if thats what people are doing to boost their mains’ xp gain then complaning that its gotten patched out is simple greed.
No wonder SOE are always trying to re-balance the xp curve when some people can level at many times normal rate while most others have to get through it the old fashioned way (quest grinding).
Reasonable fix, but it boggles my mind that professional game developers still think it’s a good idea to fail to mention this sort of thing in the patch notes. Did they really think that players would not notice, comment, and – given the timing – scream conspiracy?
They figured this out now after so many have exploited this when SF came out???? lol
The change does make sense and isn’t a bad one in my opinion. The way the community had to found out is though … i mean that post should have been made earlier by soe stating the coming change rather then try and sneak it in through the back door …
The reason the community found this out was not because the changes themselves made a noticeable difference to most people, but rather because a bug that caused some of the bonuses to not be applied at all.
Also; vitality, mentoring and lvl 90 bonuses are getting doubled just like the potion ones.