XP Cap Unreliability

[Grendlykins, Simp of Azalin Rex]

So I've returned to the server recently and in my absence, the XP system has been altered with the intent of making it clearer as to what you're actually achieving when you start bumping up against the XP cap.

On a fresh character, made with another friend at the same time, I've repeatedly bounced up into the 'Blind Drive' range of the XP cap, while my friend has never seen any messages relating to that. Being that it's difficult to measure exact outcomes from RP XP acting to mitigate the XP cap, I'm willing to assume that this might simply be a case of me going too hard. However in the last day, my XP cap has repeatedly bounced wildly, alternating between 'slow down a bit and get a better perspective', then immediately jumping past 'mentally exhausted' into 'blind drive' from a single combat XP tic from a killed enemy and roughly 4~ hours later of being logged off, once again my XP cap has dropped to 'slow down'.

Basically; the reworked XP cap so far is feeling very chaotic to me. Being that I obviously don't have access to the inner workings of the system, I can't actually tell what's going on. But the messages I'm seeing are wildly disparate in nature over relatively short periods.

TL;DR, XP cap system is confusing the hell out of me. Is this the new norm, or is something else going on?

[Day Old Bread]

I haven't noticed these inconsistencies. A few questions that might help clarify whats going on though.

Are you and your friend the same level? Are you travelling and playing together exclusively or are you playing independantly and therefor possibly earning different XP and RP XP?

Are you running level appropriate dungeons? Running dungeons at levels that are designed for characters much higher than your current level will reward more XP and therefor push you toward blind drive faster.

Four hours isn't typically enough time to see a significant reduction in your xp reductions. You may have simply been right on the cups between dungeons. Has your friend experience anything similar?

[Grendlykins, Simp of Azalin Rex]

I haven't noticed these inconsistencies. A few questions that might help clarify whats going on though.

Are you and your friend the same level? Are you travelling and playing together exclusively or are you playing independantly and therefor possibly earning different XP and RP XP?

Are you running level appropriate dungeons? Running dungeons at levels that are designed for characters much higher than your current level will reward more XP and therefor push you toward blind drive faster.

Four hours isn't typically enough time to see a significant reduction in your xp reductions. You may have simply been right on the cups between dungeons. Has your friend experience anything similar?

We are, though my friend is apparently pulling ahead of me and getting closer to being a level above me at this point. We're not tied at the hip, so there is definitely room for differences in gained RP XP and combat XP. As far as level-appropriateness, I'm out of my depth with most of the new dungeons. I seem to be doing alright damage, but the character I'm playing might be punching above their weight for their level.

I haven't run a dungeon at all for about two days now since I last levelled and got the dreaded 'blind drive' XP cap message, though I'm also not getting the red 'XP gain nullified' message I've heard of, only 'XP reduced'; I was under the assumption 'blind drive' is the maximum of the XP cap and would now give you 'XP nullified' messages. Since gaining that level two days ago, my XP cap has alternated twice between 'blind drive' and 'slow down' and the only things I've done during that entire time were craft potions, roleplay and kill a single enemy which granted XP on my way elsewhere.

[bloodless]

It's been said before that mental exhaustion and blind drive are alternative messages for the same thing. There's a red cap but this is not it.

[Grendlykins, Simp of Azalin Rex]

Well that explains that much at least, but not so much how it seems to keep seesawing wildly between rests. I've roleplayed for a solid eight hour block, seen no change in the XP cap message, but in the last day or so it's had more activity than ever before from me doing basically nothing.

[Anarcoplayba]

The XP Cap is cryptic, but I am positive that it goes as follows:

The message has three parts: the first part says how much you progrided and how, the second part where you are at your level and the third part if you have some bonus or penalty or not.

The first paragraph, telling how much XP you earned since your last rest, will tell you if close to nothing happened, if you could have performed more, if you feel satisfied, quite satisfied or proud of what you have done. Also, if you dedicated to RP instead of combat, it may say that close to nothing happened, but it was fairly eventful or fairly eventful and insightful.

The second paragraph will have two parts.

The first part of the second paragraph will tell how far you are in your level: if you recently attained your new powers, is beginning to feel more comfortable, if you thrive in your learnings or if what was once a challenge, now seems trivial. The developers do not disclose how far each one is, but I’m fairly sure it is equally divided in blocks of 25%.

This part, however, changes if you did not earn enough XP, becoming “you have yet to master your newest abilities” in the first half of your level or that you are “far along” in the last half of your level.

The second part of the paragraph will tell if you have any XP penalty.

Basically the messages are “you have a strong desire for new adventures” for bonus, “whatever the mist throws at you” for normal XP, “you should slow down” for a first level of penalty, “blind drive” for the second cap of XP  and "absolute limit" which even nullifies the XP earned in combat (the dreaded red cap).

This message informing of the cap when you are in the last quarter o your level changes a little, saying that you are mentally exhausted and may benefit from slowing down a little (the soft cap) or that if you keep pressing on, you may not be able to grasp that last bit (blind drive).

Also, I can tell you, by experience, that it is completely normal to remain entering and leaving cap in an eight hour period. I had a PC that I kept touching Slow Down and leaving for a week or so. It has many variables, sure, but in my experience, it is possible to lose cap in eight hours as long as you do not pushes on the cap. And yes, many times only on kill already puts you in cap.

[Maiyannah]

I'll "out" myself here: I'm the friend.  It me.

Arthiel has quite regularly been punching above her weight in terms of content she's done.  She absolutely has done dungeons that feel above her, because basically any party is happy to take a healer in tow, especially when they they know what they're doing.  And well I'm halfway there.  Still learning some things, but I keep people up, generally.

Comparing notes, the only real difference I can see in our play has been that he's been more into crafting than I have been, but one should think that would mitigate the XP cap more than anything.

At no point have I ever been without the message "your mind feels clear" or however it goes.  Meanwhile, Grendel has, as he said, been bouncing between blind drive and the message that feels a tier below it for days now.

I'm very likely to be a couple levels ahead of him soon - with no really quantifiable difference in playstyle.  That's when I said maybe he should report it or ask a DM or something, because so far as we can tell, two people playing similar content at a similar pace have had very different outcomes.  It seems something is not working as intended in that light.

[Grendlykins, Simp of Azalin Rex]

Also, I can tell you, by experience, that it is completely normal to remain entering and leaving cap in an eight hour period. I had a PC that I kept touching Slow Down and leaving for a week or so. It has many variables, sure, but in my experience, it is possible to lose cap in eight hours as long as you do not pushes on the cap. And yes, many times only on kill already puts you in cap.

Everything you describe tracks with my knowledge of the XP system. But this part in particular is the one that makes little to no sense to me. The XP cap messages, if I understand the intent, are to tell you roughly how much you're wasting your time from continuing to dungeon, kill and do quests. For it to wildly oscillate between the multiple messages over a relatively small amount of time, and for extremely little impact, is extremely counterintuitive to me.

Assuming that the XP cap messages correspond to a rough percentile loss of your total XP earned from combat/quests, varying from 1% to 100%, the idea that it rapidly swings between values is just confusing. I'm aware that the intent of the XP system is to generally obfuscate exactly what's doing what, so players don't engage in dominant strategy by solely farming specific areas for maximum XP and in doing so undermine the general tone of player interactions, but this diegetic approach is also supposed to provide at least some information for us to act upon. If the system's intended function is for your XP cap to swing from the low end to the high end just for happening to be nearby when something dies, that feels pretty unfulfilling.

[Day Old Bread]

I'd recommend taking some screenshots of the messages you're getting.  I don't know if the same message applies to the xp cap warning system as other systems, but the message will change depending on how much activity and xp you've gained in a given time too.

For instance, there are a few markers that indicate how far along your progression is toward your next level. They are as follows:

0-25% Newly acquired talents
25%-50% Starting to feel comfortable
50%-75% You feel you thrive
75%-100% What was once a challenge now feels trivial

Each of these messages changes to a different set of messages that I don't remember off the top of my head to indicate you've not been adventuring much.  I'm currently sitting at the 25%-50% marker on one of my characters and it reads "you've yet to master your newest powers".

Again, I'm not sure if the xp cap warning system plays the same way or not, mostly because I'm very rarely outside of "whatever the mists throw at you" because I do dungeons very sparingly. Again though, this is where screenshots will really help. You can show the community what you're seeing and perhaps gain some perspective from players who've been seeing these messages for a long time.

As I understand it, the messages are the same as they've always been on rest. The only changes to the XP cap system is that now when you're actually gaining xp you'll see the regular: Experience Gained, Experience Gained (diminished by cap), and whatever the third one is. These show up in Yellow for full xp, orange for diminished, and red for "you're barely getting anything"

[Grendlykins, Simp of Azalin Rex]

I'd recommend taking some screenshots of the messages you're getting.  I don't know if the same message applies to the xp cap warning system as other systems, but the message will change depending on how much activity and xp you've gained in a given time too.

As I understand it, the messages are the same as they've always been on rest. The only changes to the XP cap system is that now when you're actually gaining xp you'll see the regular: Experience Gained, Experience Gained (diminished by cap), and whatever the third one is. These show up in Yellow for full xp, orange for diminished, and red for "you're barely getting anything"

The XP messages certainly haven't changed since I was last around, some 2~ years ago; at least not in terms of what you read. Whether the actual information behind them has been tweaked, I don't know beyond seeing forum posts saying that the system has been largely untouched except to change how XP gains are reported relative to the XP cap and the rate at which the XP cap is gained/lost. My reference of measurement was blind drive used to represent days, if not weeks of not being able to dungeon for decent XP, but now it seems to change in as little as a quarter of a day, or last as long as two or three.

As has been previously said, there are three components to each rest message; the XP gained both in combat/quest XP and roleplay XP, the relative XP to your next level and your progression through the XP cap. All of them have particular key phrases that act as shorthand for what has been largely assumed by the community to be their equivalent XP gains; a 'Proud' rest message in the XP gained is assumed to be 25% or higher of your level and is the largest increment reported. 'Trivial' in your current XP progression is the 90% to next level mark. Blind Drive is 90% or greater of your XP is lost to the XP cap. These three are the ones most people keep track of, because they're obviously the most important changes in one rest cycle. Obviously these percentages are guesstimates since the system is intentionally opaque.

I've included an album link to all the clips I've bothered to take of my rest messages on this character from their inception to current day. Note that the ones that mention the XP cap were within the last two days and omits numerous examples of it switching between 'slow down', 'mentally exhausted' and 'blind drive' within that space of time. To me, it feels as if the XP cap messages are either reporting false information, or the XP cap system itself swings wildly through it's spectrum based on criterion that I lack information/understanding of.

Rest messages here.

[ladylena]

I've noticed a few things lately. It does seem like the messege will sometimes change from what your used to seeing to suddenly seeming to suggest that you've done very little at all ever, and then the next time you rest it could be that you're getting close to mastering your skills. I sort of dimissed it as the messege relating to the amount of stuff done by the character

[Anarcoplayba]

Also, I can tell you, by experience, that it is completely normal to remain entering and leaving cap in an eight hour period. I had a PC that I kept touching Slow Down and leaving for a week or so. It has many variables, sure, but in my experience, it is possible to lose cap in eight hours as long as you do not pushes on the cap. And yes, many times only on kill already puts you in cap.

Everything you describe tracks with my knowledge of the XP system. But this part in particular is the one that makes little to no sense to me. The XP cap messages, if I understand the intent, are to tell you roughly how much you're wasting your time from continuing to dungeon, kill and do quests. For it to wildly oscillate between the multiple messages over a relatively small amount of time, and for extremely little impact, is extremely counterintuitive to me.

Assuming that the XP cap messages correspond to a rough percentile loss of your total XP earned from combat/quests, varying from 1% to 100%, the idea that it rapidly swings between values is just confusing. I'm aware that the intent of the XP system is to generally obfuscate exactly what's doing what, so players don't engage in dominant strategy by solely farming specific areas for maximum XP and in doing so undermine the general tone of player interactions, but this diegetic approach is also supposed to provide at least some information for us to act upon. If the system's intended function is for your XP cap to swing from the low end to the high end just for happening to be nearby when something dies, that feels pretty unfulfilling.

The point is that the system, as far as I know, is not gradual, it is escalonated. You have degrees of cap that either they are on, or off.

[Maiyannah]

I've noticed a few things lately. It does seem like the messege will sometimes change from what your used to seeing to suddenly seeming to suggest that you've done very little at all ever, and then the next time you rest it could be that you're getting close to mastering your skills. I sort of dimissed it as the messege relating to the amount of stuff done by the character

I believe "done nothing" just refers to combat XP specifically, as you can get something like "You have basically done nothing, but still feel the experience was enlightening", which is essentially telling you that you got no or little combat XP that period, but a lot of RP XP.

[zDark Shadowz]

The messages, for me, having gotten from 2 to lvl 11 in about 3 months have been fairly consistent.

I've noticed levelling up has reduced the combat XP cap, but I've also been able to pull ahead of someone who undeniably has more time for RP than me, if I pushed myself to get the next level before I spent time crafting or roleplaying.

There's a lot of ways the messages change, and I can't say for others what they've been experiencing, but as someone who danced a lot between fresh and blind drive recently, they've been consistently what I expected to see.

[iputahexonme]

Perhaps your friend is doing more RP than you while you are crafting and thus is getting more benefit from RP reduction of blind drive?

[Grendlykins, Simp of Azalin Rex]

Perhaps your friend is doing more RP than you while you are crafting and thus is getting more benefit from RP reduction of blind drive?

As I said above; that's perfectly possible. But it doesn't explain the seesawing of the XP cap messages flitting wildly between their extremes.

[iputahexonme]

Gotcha,

It sounds to me like you are just on the edge of blind drive vs. slow down and you keep flipping back and forth.

The algorithm as I understand it it bases blind drive on xp gain vs. time played as a base, and then modifies it as mentioned above with a good number of variables (known and unknown I'm sure). It makes sense that over the course of play those variables change enough to push you into or out of blind drive if you are right on the edge of it. Also the more you rest the more things change, as I've noticed resting is when things seem to compile to change your blind drive/xp gain debuff etc etc.

[Grendlykins, Simp of Azalin Rex]

Gotcha,

It sounds to me like you are just on the edge of blind drive vs. slow down and you keep flipping back and forth.

The algorithm as I understand it it bases blind drive on xp gain vs. time played as a base, and then modifies it as mentioned above with a good number of variables (known and unknown I'm sure). It makes sense that over the course of play those variables change enough to push you into or out of blind drive if you are right on the edge of it. Also the more you rest the more things change, as I've noticed resting is when things seem to compile to change your blind drive/xp gain debuff etc etc.

'Blind drive' and 'slow down' are separated by at least one, even two tiers, such as 'mentally exhausted'. Flipping back up to 'blind drive' once might make sense in the case of the single kill I got, but for it to then drop down and then go back up without any XP gained?

[Maiyannah]

To reiterate: I've never been at a moment where I've seen a message beyond "fresh and ready".  I probably am roleplaying more than Grendel, but not that much more, I should think (and indeed, a lot of my roleplay has been with him!)

The suggestion that he's probably just at some threshold is likely apt, but it both seems unintended, and moreover rather frustrating, to be at that cap so consistently irrespective of changes of behaviour.  He's had whole days (IRL) of roleplay and it hasn't seemed to budge; which doesn't track with what many people have said to me with regards to how the system worked - most seem to think a day or two of taking it easy would have it simmer down, but it's not been the case.

[Anarcoplayba]

To reiterate: I've never been at a moment where I've seen a message beyond "fresh and ready".  I probably am roleplaying more than Grendel, but not that much more, I should think (and indeed, a lot of my roleplay has been with him!)

The suggestion that he's probably just at some threshold is likely apt, but it both seems unintended, and moreover rather frustrating, to be at that cap so consistently irrespective of changes of behaviour.  He's had whole days (IRL) of roleplay and it hasn't seemed to budge; which doesn't track with what many people have said to me with regards to how the system worked - most seem to think a day or two of taking it easy would have it simmer down, but it's not been the case.

Gents, I know it can be frustrating to not truly grasp the situation, but trust me, nothing that you said above shows any strange signal or that any problem is happening.

I'll refer to my first post: the reat message has a code and some particularities that may be misleading, but it is only an apparent incongruence.

"Mentally" exhausted is not a separated cap, it is any cap (SD, BD or AL) when in the last quarter of the level.

"Far along" is not a separated message, it is the message that appears when you did not earn much XP and is in the last half of XP.

Also, it is bot simply a measure of how much dungeon or RP you did. The quality is important too. If you have someone with a big level difference in the party it will hurt more. If you are rping with more than two people it will count more (I believe), the size of the party, the amount of XP, etc. Everything adds up and make it almost impossible to compare pc developement, which does not mean that the messages are unreliable, it is just a cide that takes tine to be cracked.

[zDark Shadowz]

'Blind drive' and 'slow down' are separated by at least one, even two tiers, such as 'mentally exhausted'. Flipping back up to 'blind drive' once might make sense in the case of the single kill I got, but for it to then drop down and then go back up without any XP gained?

Mentally exhausted is a variant text of slow down or blind drive that shows up, depending on whether you gained enough XP or not, and when you're near your next level, with variations of "and all things considered, might benefit from taking it slow for a bit." (Which is different from "perhaps you should slow down and get a better perspective of your actions as you perform them") and "you may not be able to get that last bit" (when on trivial stage and your blind drive is running the risk of redcapping before you would level)

Because the amount of XP changes what the text actually says when you're on your last stretch, it's best to do a second rest outside of RP XP and combat interactions to get a better baseline message to go off of.

[Maiyannah]

In the case that it's just a variant message, then he's been at the cap for doing less than I have, for three maybe four days now... with us doing similar content and Arthy doing some stuff that I *think* is higher-end still it seems confusing, at best, that he'd be at the cap and I wouldn't.

[zDark Shadowz]

There are other factors that I suspect burn the candle on the combat XP more than they normally would, and if my suspicions were confirmed there would be a lot of party gatekeeping, which is potentially the main reason its not discussed.

There's implications that level difference can adversely affect the lower of two people who travel together, but the lower of two people also gain a small XP boost so it is partially counteracted, so they burn their combat cap a little faster but they would be "catching up" as they did so, and maintaining roleplay XP during a dungeon becomes highly coveted since its XP unaffected by the rate.

There's also an implication that parties greater than 5 will burn it as well in another manner, since the system info that is given says that XP will gradually decrease in parties greater than 5, and the easiest mechanic for that is the combat XP cap shortening quicker.

There's variant messages and variant mechanics that are incorporated in different ways that only work because everything cools down, eventually, and roleplay is unaffected by it, so, eventually, one realizes that the best XP they can get is from the roleplay they get along the way.

The act of levelling up also shortens the cap, but the next level has a different buffer, so you'll see weird things like being on slow down while on trivial, and then with only roleplay XP, level up to your next level and find out you're now on blind drive, but you may still end up cooling down quicker for that level than your teammate who remained one level behind for longer.

~~

If you're close to your level, try not to damage your combat cap with the next level by getting it with combat XP, try get it from roleplay, otherwise you double-compound that blind drive effect and take extra time achieving it and getting out of it.

~~

Not everything I say may be entirely correct, since its based off the one post about it, and my own subjective experience than objective fact, but since the game theory in general is hitting enough on my end the above is what I stick by.

Depending on the content you're doing at the lower level spectrum, there are dungeons that at level 5-6 are poor XP (not all "Experienced Gained" messages are equal...) but for a level 3-4 are supremely excellent, so you very well can end up with a slow down & fresh discrepancy since the higher level could very well just not be getting enough to be put into slow down, but they're providing a small combat XP boost to their partner who is in a better level range for the combat progression that it drives the lower level into it instead.

It is a small spectrum band though thats only really observable in lower level play.

[SardineTheAncestor]

many people have said to me with regards to how the system worked - most seem to think a day or two of taking it easy would have it simmer down, but it's not been the case.

To go from even halfway down the chain, without ever seeing the red cap, back to "your mind feels fresh" e.g. "normal XP" can take 5+ days even with RP going on, and every single kill that yields experience pushes you back down the chain. It's possible that being in the cap at all punishes you more for gaining XP than not being in the cap.

I don't know how many weeks you have been playing together, but I think once you play a few more weeks you'll see that you are both the same level or within 50% of a level of each other. These little dents you are noticing now, which are most likely more minute than you realise, usually iron out over sustained periods of play even if you only play together sometimes.

One of you might take an extra dungeon here or there but once you get to level 12-14, that won't be making a huge difference. The XP required to level will have become so exponential that you will clear entire dungeons without noticing a change in your rest message.

If you're really worried about it, take a week off dungeoning completely. This will slow down your overall leveling pace, but you will be in XP bank territory where it says you have a strong desire to adventure. If you aren't red capping now, I think you'll find it hard to lose that for more than 3 days at a time, and you certainly won't see blind drive anymore.