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A simple game design idea to encourage clearing all areas, not just a few hotspots
I've always felt it's kinda waste of the game to have only a select few areas be "the best" spots for xp or certain items. In my opinion, players should be encouraged to clear out a variety of areas, perhaps even all of them. As an illustration I'll just describe a simple idea how to achieve it.
The idea is to track how often a player has cleared every area, and give a bonus to areas he hasn't been to often, and give a penalty to areas he has been whoring.
One way to do it that I came up with, would be to, for every monster killed, tally the percentage of the area's monsters that this monster was (i.e if the area has 100 monsters, killing each monster would add 1 to the counter for this area, if the area has 5 monsters, killin each monster adds 20% to the counter, etc). You could have a separate counter for Super Uniques (and maybe Kurast chests? lol). Then, these counters could start to play in with bonuses and penalties for XP and item drops.
For an example, let's say there are 10 areas in the game. You fully clear areas 1...5 once each, and their counter goes to 100%. Then you clear area 6 ten times in a row, and it's counter goes to 1000%. Then you start clearing area 7 but you only manage to kill 5 monsters and then you have to leave, while the area has 50 monsters in total. The counter for area 7 goes to 5/50*100=10%. Next time you clear area 7 fully, and its counter now grows to 110%. Then you start to clear area 7 again, but only manage to whack 20 monsters before you have to go again, and its counter grows to 110%+(20/50*100%)=150%. Etc.
For a more specific way on how the bonuses and penalties would work, let's say perhaps:
-) If (the counter for the current area or super unique) is greater than (the (geometric?) mean counter for all the other areas or super uniques put together), meaning that you have cleared this area or killed this super unique more times than the average of all other areas and super uniques, you get a penalty dependent on that difference. Possibly, your XP and MF and other things for the area could be 100%/(100%+10^[(log of that difference in percentages) - 2]). What this would mean, if I didn't mess up, is that if you have cleared an area on average 1 more time than the mean of all other areas, you get a penalty of ~1%. If you have cleared an area on average 10 more times, you get a penalty of ~10%. If you have cleared an area on average 100 more times, you get a penalty of ~50%. If you have cleared an area on average 1000 more times, you get a penalty of ~90%.
+) If (the counter for the current area or super unique) is lower than (the (geometric?) mean counter for all the other areas or super uniques put together), meaning that you have cleared this area or killed this super unique fewer times than the average of all other areas and super uniques, you get a bonus dependent on that difference. Possibly, your XP and MF and other things for the area could be 100%+10^(log of that difference in percentages). What this would mean, is that if you have cleared all other areas on average 1 more time, you get a bonus of 100%. If 10 more times, a bonus of 1000%. Etc. This might seem a lot, but keep in mind that as you clear the area or kill the super unique, you are reducing the difference in the counter, and furthermore a geometric mean would protect from exploits as explained below.
I suggested geometric mean because it REALLY discounts extremely high values (arithmetic mean of 10000 and 1 is 5000,5, whereas geometric is... 100), meaning that it REALLY wouldn't pay off to clear one small dungeon a lot to get a better bonus (or lower penalty) for other areas. In general in order to get one area to be counted as cleared 10 fewer times than all other areas, you would have to clear pretty much all other areas about 10 times. I don't think that's ever worth it. In using geometric mean, the baseline for the counters would have to be greater than 0 though, or else all means would come out as zeros. Maybe a 100 then?
For comparability, perhaps the lowest counter you have should always be 100, and upon adding to this counter, instead of this counter growing in number, all others would be reduced, up to the point where this counter would stop being the lowest. For an example, let's say the lowest is Area A with 100% and the next lowest is Area B with 110%. Upon clearing Area A, all other counters would drop a proportional number, while Area A would remain 100%. After clearing 10% though, Area B would have dropped to 100%, and now Area A would start growing while all other areas stayed in place. For calculating means, counters could have weights depending on the size of the area (not so straightforward with geometric I guess, but possible).
Then there is the question of how to make it work in multiplayer and parties. The simple way would be to divide the gain to the counter equally between members of the party, and for means perhaps only take in account the highest counter in the party for every area. It's up to the players to not accept people who have whored the location. Geometric mean would make it less relevant wether the guy has whored a different location than the one currently being cleared. There could be a time decay to the counters. Let's say 100% a day for the highest counter. For an example Area A is highest with 2000%, Area B is second highest with 1450%. Every day, 100% is taken away from Area A. After 5 days, Area A will be 1500% and Area B will be 1450%. Now, after 1 more day, 50% of the 100% will be "spent" on getting Area A down to 1450% as well, and the remaining 50% will be split between the two, bringing both down to 1425%.
I feel there could be a further bonus for clearing an act and/or the whole game in one go, but that's not so relevant anymore. What I would like especially, would be if once in a while, the gains in one particular area were boosted. Let's say you are just playing, you go back to town, and some NPC will have the exclamation mark above his head. You go talk to him and he says: "This and this area is rumoured to have a lot of treasure!" Now when you go to that area, you gain a lot more XP and items than usually. A sort of mini-event, if you will. This could possibly be dependent on how many times you have cleared the entire game.
I've obviously just brought the first formulas and stuff that came to my mind to illustrate the underlying idea. I don't really care what exactly was in place as long as the result (encouraging clearing all areas not just the few hotspots) would be achieved.
What do you think?
I've always felt it's kinda waste of the game to have only a select few areas be "the best" spots for xp or certain items. In my opinion, players should be encouraged to clear out a variety of areas, perhaps even all of them. As an illustration I'll just describe a simple idea how to achieve it.
The idea is to track how often a player has cleared every area, and give a bonus to areas he hasn't been to often, and give a penalty to areas he has been whoring.
One way to do it that I came up with, would be to, for every monster killed, tally the percentage of the area's monsters that this monster was (i.e if the area has 100 monsters, killing each monster would add 1 to the counter for this area, if the area has 5 monsters, killin each monster adds 20% to the counter, etc). You could have a separate counter for Super Uniques (and maybe Kurast chests? lol). Then, these counters could start to play in with bonuses and penalties for XP and item drops.
For an example, let's say there are 10 areas in the game. You fully clear areas 1...5 once each, and their counter goes to 100%. Then you clear area 6 ten times in a row, and it's counter goes to 1000%. Then you start clearing area 7 but you only manage to kill 5 monsters and then you have to leave, while the area has 50 monsters in total. The counter for area 7 goes to 5/50*100=10%. Next time you clear area 7 fully, and its counter now grows to 110%. Then you start to clear area 7 again, but only manage to whack 20 monsters before you have to go again, and its counter grows to 110%+(20/50*100%)=150%. Etc.
For a more specific way on how the bonuses and penalties would work, let's say perhaps:
-) If (the counter for the current area or super unique) is greater than (the (geometric?) mean counter for all the other areas or super uniques put together), meaning that you have cleared this area or killed this super unique more times than the average of all other areas and super uniques, you get a penalty dependent on that difference. Possibly, your XP and MF and other things for the area could be 100%/(100%+10^[(log of that difference in percentages) - 2]). What this would mean, if I didn't mess up, is that if you have cleared an area on average 1 more time than the mean of all other areas, you get a penalty of ~1%. If you have cleared an area on average 10 more times, you get a penalty of ~10%. If you have cleared an area on average 100 more times, you get a penalty of ~50%. If you have cleared an area on average 1000 more times, you get a penalty of ~90%.
+) If (the counter for the current area or super unique) is lower than (the (geometric?) mean counter for all the other areas or super uniques put together), meaning that you have cleared this area or killed this super unique fewer times than the average of all other areas and super uniques, you get a bonus dependent on that difference. Possibly, your XP and MF and other things for the area could be 100%+10^(log of that difference in percentages). What this would mean, is that if you have cleared all other areas on average 1 more time, you get a bonus of 100%. If 10 more times, a bonus of 1000%. Etc. This might seem a lot, but keep in mind that as you clear the area or kill the super unique, you are reducing the difference in the counter, and furthermore a geometric mean would protect from exploits as explained below.
I suggested geometric mean because it REALLY discounts extremely high values (arithmetic mean of 10000 and 1 is 5000,5, whereas geometric is... 100), meaning that it REALLY wouldn't pay off to clear one small dungeon a lot to get a better bonus (or lower penalty) for other areas. In general in order to get one area to be counted as cleared 10 fewer times than all other areas, you would have to clear pretty much all other areas about 10 times. I don't think that's ever worth it. In using geometric mean, the baseline for the counters would have to be greater than 0 though, or else all means would come out as zeros. Maybe a 100 then?
For comparability, perhaps the lowest counter you have should always be 100, and upon adding to this counter, instead of this counter growing in number, all others would be reduced, up to the point where this counter would stop being the lowest. For an example, let's say the lowest is Area A with 100% and the next lowest is Area B with 110%. Upon clearing Area A, all other counters would drop a proportional number, while Area A would remain 100%. After clearing 10% though, Area B would have dropped to 100%, and now Area A would start growing while all other areas stayed in place. For calculating means, counters could have weights depending on the size of the area (not so straightforward with geometric I guess, but possible).
Then there is the question of how to make it work in multiplayer and parties. The simple way would be to divide the gain to the counter equally between members of the party, and for means perhaps only take in account the highest counter in the party for every area. It's up to the players to not accept people who have whored the location. Geometric mean would make it less relevant wether the guy has whored a different location than the one currently being cleared. There could be a time decay to the counters. Let's say 100% a day for the highest counter. For an example Area A is highest with 2000%, Area B is second highest with 1450%. Every day, 100% is taken away from Area A. After 5 days, Area A will be 1500% and Area B will be 1450%. Now, after 1 more day, 50% of the 100% will be "spent" on getting Area A down to 1450% as well, and the remaining 50% will be split between the two, bringing both down to 1425%.
I feel there could be a further bonus for clearing an act and/or the whole game in one go, but that's not so relevant anymore. What I would like especially, would be if once in a while, the gains in one particular area were boosted. Let's say you are just playing, you go back to town, and some NPC will have the exclamation mark above his head. You go talk to him and he says: "This and this area is rumoured to have a lot of treasure!" Now when you go to that area, you gain a lot more XP and items than usually. A sort of mini-event, if you will. This could possibly be dependent on how many times you have cleared the entire game.
I've obviously just brought the first formulas and stuff that came to my mind to illustrate the underlying idea. I don't really care what exactly was in place as long as the result (encouraging clearing all areas not just the few hotspots) would be achieved.
What do you think?