VP vs. XP

DigitalHype · November 2014

I also experienced this on my V10 Templar. I didn't notice it until today. As I was only playing my Sorc.

Prior to either today's patch, or last weeks update, my Templar's progress was reduced from about 80% (minimum) on the bar toward VR11, to less than 25%.

So, not only has VR->XP conversion resulted in throttling of the rate at which you would acquire VR rank, for completing quests/mobs/exploration, etc. There has also been a reduction in the existing percentage of progress toward the next level. At least for some (all?) VR characters.

DigitalHype · November 2014

Ninnghizhidda wrote: »

I really fail to understand the purpose, maybe I am naive, but I can not quite grasp even the "business plan" behind this. Do they really expect people to pay subs for months and months just to chase the "next level cap" (yeah, alright, accompanied with the next awesome Trial or Arena or whatnot), while they level at a snail's pace? Well, a few might just do, but I am not sure about the many.

Time shall tell, but, on the other hand, time is running short too. And what we see so far, bugged or intended, is a pretty damn stupid design / plan they got.

They might be accepting any subscription losses with existing players that get frustrated and leave. In fact, those players might already be nearing the end of the expected average subscription lifetime anyway.

The recent changes to throttle progress could be a decision made with respect to future players, and ones who have not yet reached VR. Now that they have added some new things to do (although arguably not great for casual layers), they might have decided the can extend the leveling time, and slightly increase the average subscription length for new players.

I would not be surprised to see a big marketing push for the game, or sale very soon.

Wolfenbelle · November 2014

DigitalHype wrote: »

They might be accepting any subscription losses with existing players that get frustrated and leave...The recent changes to throttle progress could be a decision made with respect to future players, and ones who have not yet reached VR. Now that they have added some new things to do (although arguably not great for casual layers), they might have decided the can extend the leveling time, and slightly increase the average subscription length for new players.

IF this is the plan — big IF — it's a very stupid one. As I mentioned, 18 percentage points of XP were taken away from my Templar with Monday's patch. No successful business model takes something away from a customer that the customer has rightfully achieved or acquired unless what is being taken away will be immediately replaced by something of equal value.

Look at it this way. Suppose you buy something in a store, pay in full for it, then a few days later someone from the store says the product is being recalled. So you bring it back, along with your receipt, but the store does not give you anything in return. You don't get your money back, and you don't get a replacement product of at least equal value to the one recalled. How would you and other customers react?

The same principle applies to this situation in which ZoS has reduced — taken away — something their customer had acquired.

DigitalHype · November 2014

Wolfenbelle wrote: »

DigitalHype wrote: »

They might be accepting any subscription losses with existing players that get frustrated and leave...The recent changes to throttle progress could be a decision made with respect to future players, and ones who have not yet reached VR. Now that they have added some new things to do (although arguably not great for casual layers), they might have decided the can extend the leveling time, and slightly increase the average subscription length for new players.

IF this is the plan — big IF — it's a very stupid one. As I mentioned, 18 percentage points of XP were taken away from my Templar with Monday's patch. No successful business model takes something away from a customer that the customer has rightfully achieved or acquired unless what is being taken away will be immediately replaced by something of equal value.

No, what you are describing is a new issue that seems to have crept in with today's patch. That is almost certainly a bug.

I was talking about the changes from the update that have increased the amount of time it takes a player to reach the next VR level. That was by design. (except for the part where XP caps are being calculated wrong for VR levels). But, that is only a small part of the changes.

Your problem is with XP that seems to go backwards. Players reporting leveling up, only to later go backwards, and then have to achieve the level again. That is similar to the symptoms they have with skill like experience rolling back. Those were initially reported to be cosmetic UI issues. But, I think more recent developments have showing there is more to it than just server/client out-of-sync issues.

Valymer · November 2014

Wolfenbelle wrote: »

I completed Cadwell's Gold with my vr14 Templar on Saturday, then spent some time Sunday chasing a few delves and other things to complete the full Tamriel Trailblazer achievement. My journal confirms that I completed it on 11/9/14. I also completed all the quests and killed all the bosses in the Razak's Wheel dungeon in Bangkorai (and got a cool Dwemer spider pet as a reward when completing the last task of the last quest).

When all of this effort was completed, my Wykkyd's toolbar showed that my Templar had accumulated about 29% XP on the way toward whatever 100% will be for a vr14. Today, after downloading the patch, my Templar's XP was adjusted DOWN to only 11%, a massive 18 percentage point loss of XP overnight!!! Why? I don't understand what the last patch did to veteran rank XP or what today's patch did.

That's not all. My alt vr14 Sorcerer's XP is stuck at 99%, which means she's accumulated only 1% and has 99% more to obtain. I've done some quests and a dungeon with her in Deshaan, but the XP she needs is stuck at 99%, meaning I'm getting ZERO XP for those activities. Why? I don't want to repeat Cadwell's with this alt. I only want to level up some skills to try end-game content that I couldn't do while leveling her. Now it looks like that might not be possible.

This makes no sense. If this is a bug, it should be hot fixed ASAP. If it's intended, then it's truly nuts. What would be the point of doing anything more with a vr14 if the character doesn't earn any veteran's points or experience points?

My Templar has 7125 achievement points. If I keep chasing achievements with her, will she also be earning XP? If not, why bother doing anything?

The same thing happened to me (except from VR13 to 14) and I am really hoping that the patch Thursday boosts my percentage back up there closer to the next level (like it was before the patch)

xarguideb17_ESO · November 2014

Not Thursday. For US the patch went live yesterday, for EU, today.

Valymer · November 2014

xarguideb17_ESO wrote: »

Not Thursday. For US the patch went live yesterday, for EU, today.

Talking about this:

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/139480/patch-v1-5-3-what-happened/p1

Perphection · November 2014

"Hey everyone, ZOS Here!! We know you all hate VR content/leveling.. so we fooled you months ago by saying it was over and we were adding the Champion system!! ...Then we added VR14 instead

! NOW, to *** with you even more we made leveling even WORSE!!! We seriously hate our subscribers and hope that all of you burn in car fires!! Have a great day. -ZOS"

This is how I feel.

Valymer · November 2014

OK, it seems that exp thing for me was just an addon bug. Hitting "C" shows the correct progress. I guess it had something to do with the XP/VP thing they mentioned changing in 1.5.3

Cuyler · November 2014

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Hi everyone,

Due to the elimination of Veteran Points, you may need to rethink your leveling strategy a little from what you previously used to doing to gain a Veteran Rank. For example, the XP-per-kill ratio of a boss monster is not as good as the VP-per-kill ratio was before Update 5, but the amount of XP rewarded for that boss has not changed. Among other things, this change was necessary to make leveling a more predictable experience in preparation for the Champion System, and to prevent a wide split among players. We want to keep all the ways you gain experience equivalent, and not let a certain method become more worthwhile than others.

As reported earlier this week, we have identified a couple issues surrounding experience gain:
Monsters that are well below your level give slightly less experience than intended. This will be fixed in our next incremental patch.

The experience that you receive at the conclusion of a particularly difficult quest can reach a limit, and thus gets capped off. While the cap is there intentionally, it was set to level 50 values rather than VR values. This is being adjusted.

Note that experience gain buffs such as the Rings of Mara and normal grouping continue to give a bonus to your experience gain, and thus a faster rise within Veteran Ranks.

We hope this explanation helps a bit, but please don't hesitate to let us know if you have any remaining questions.

This is how I actually interpreted this as I read it:

Hi everyone,

We know if you were sick and tired of repeating the same quests over and over, you went to craglorn to grind out bosses for a modest amount of VP.

Because people were complaining that quests weren't giving enough VP as compared to crag grinds, we've decided that instead of increasing xp for quests like you asked, it's best if we nerf our endgame content so you all get the same slow xp no matter if your fighting craglorn monsters or if your fighting mudcrabs at v1. What we need all of you to understand is you should never want or need to reach v14.

We realize that most of you won't want to change your strategies to level as slow as a turtle so we're going to adjust the system to force it on you. This change should secure our subscription revenues for the next 20 years as long as players don't pull the wool off of their eyes and realize they're on a endless mouse wheel that generates income for us.

Note that your also now forced to group as well if your looking to get the infinitesimally small and unnoticeable increase in xp gains that we said everyone would get originally.

We hope that by telling you this you won't just unsub, so feel free to ask any more questions if that makes you feel better.

/sarcasm

stunning · November 2014

It's more like this - Thank you very much for those great ideas -- But to make it clear we don't give a crap what you think -- we think you all play like crap -- So we are going punish you now by taking your money and make you just grind. You will get very little xp also and to make our point you are not to lvl anymore.
-
In the future we will bring in another lvling system and we don't want to hear one word about it or the punishment that you are receiving will be far worse -- maybe even make you loose xp for killing any mobs.

Thank you ZOS -- and have a nice day

Robocles · November 2014

DigitalHype wrote: »

Ninnghizhidda wrote: »

I really fail to understand the purpose, maybe I am naive, but I can not quite grasp even the "business plan" behind this. Do they really expect people to pay subs for months and months just to chase the "next level cap" (yeah, alright, accompanied with the next awesome Trial or Arena or whatnot), while they level at a snail's pace? Well, a few might just do, but I am not sure about the many.

Time shall tell, but, on the other hand, time is running short too. And what we see so far, bugged or intended, is a pretty damn stupid design / plan they got.

They might be accepting any subscription losses with existing players that get frustrated and leave. In fact, those players might already be nearing the end of the expected average subscription lifetime anyway.

The recent changes to throttle progress could be a decision made with respect to future players, and ones who have not yet reached VR. Now that they have added some new things to do (although arguably not great for casual layers), they might have decided the can extend the leveling time, and slightly increase the average subscription length for new players.

I would not be surprised to see a big marketing push for the game, or sale very soon.

And I might be the Queen of England.

phreatophile · November 2014

stunning wrote: »

I love this statement " prevent a wide split among players" -- You know they just might be right there -- all the players that already have a vr14 toon will be happy and all the rest will quit playing and puff no wide split of players -- great plan Gina -- now they should put you back in the padded room

Totally inappropriate and unfair to Gina. She is a spokeswoman in this case. I'm certain none of this can be blamed on her. Padded room indeed.

You want to blame someone, try whomever is responsible for pushing a patch with this much wrong with it live. That person(s) had to have seen the PTS bug reports and chose to disregard them; had to have known how many things were borked with this one. At least someone wasn't surprised by this mess.

Robocles · November 2014

phreatophile wrote: »

stunning wrote: »

I love this statement " prevent a wide split among players" -- You know they just might be right there -- all the players that already have a vr14 toon will be happy and all the rest will quit playing and puff no wide split of players -- great plan Gina -- now they should put you back in the padded room

Totally inappropriate and unfair to Gina. She is a spokeswoman in this case. I'm certain none of this can be blamed on her. Padded room indeed.

You want to blame someone, try whomever is responsible for pushing a patch with this much wrong with it live. That person(s) had to have seen the PTS bug reports and chose to disregard them; had to have known how many things were borked with this one. At least someone wasn't surprised by this mess.

I'm going to agree with this to a point.

It isn't directly her fault. But, she keeps putting her name to what is demonstrably false and misleading information. I find it very hard to believe she (and the others who keep posting this crap recently) don't know this. It's a job, I get it. That doesn't mean I like what I'm hearing, though.

That said, @stunning shouldn't have attacked her directly regarding the plan. We all get upset, though, and post things that we don't mean.

Regarding anyone who should have seen the PTS reports... well, I'd assume our forum admins and mods would have. And almost all of this was there for a good 3+ weeks before the patch went live. Then they come back and act like it's all news to them.

phreatophile · November 2014

Robocles wrote: »

phreatophile wrote: »

stunning wrote: »

I love this statement " prevent a wide split among players" -- You know they just might be right there -- all the players that already have a vr14 toon will be happy and all the rest will quit playing and puff no wide split of players -- great plan Gina -- now they should put you back in the padded room

Totally inappropriate and unfair to Gina. She is a spokeswoman in this case. I'm certain none of this can be blamed on her. Padded room indeed.

You want to blame someone, try whomever is responsible for pushing a patch with this much wrong with it live. That person(s) had to have seen the PTS bug reports and chose to disregard them; had to have known how many things were borked with this one. At least someone wasn't surprised by this mess.

I'm going to agree with this to a point.

It isn't directly her fault. But, she keeps putting her name to what is demonstrably false and misleading information. I find it very hard to believe she (and the others who keep posting this crap recently) don't know this. It's a job, I get it. That doesn't mean I like what I'm hearing, though.

That said, @stunning shouldn't have attacked her directly regarding the plan. We all get upset, though, and post things that we don't mean.

Regarding anyone who should have seen the PTS reports... well, I'd assume our forum admins and mods would have. And almost all of this was there for a good 3+ weeks before the patch went live. Then they come back and act like it's all news to them.

That's fair. Something stinks to high heaven about this, but the personal attack was pretty rude.

Robocles · November 2014

phreatophile wrote: »

Robocles wrote: »

phreatophile wrote: »

stunning wrote: »

I love this statement " prevent a wide split among players" -- You know they just might be right there -- all the players that already have a vr14 toon will be happy and all the rest will quit playing and puff no wide split of players -- great plan Gina -- now they should put you back in the padded room

Totally inappropriate and unfair to Gina. She is a spokeswoman in this case. I'm certain none of this can be blamed on her. Padded room indeed.

You want to blame someone, try whomever is responsible for pushing a patch with this much wrong with it live. That person(s) had to have seen the PTS bug reports and chose to disregard them; had to have known how many things were borked with this one. At least someone wasn't surprised by this mess.

I'm going to agree with this to a point.

It isn't directly her fault. But, she keeps putting her name to what is demonstrably false and misleading information. I find it very hard to believe she (and the others who keep posting this crap recently) don't know this. It's a job, I get it. That doesn't mean I like what I'm hearing, though.

That said, @stunning shouldn't have attacked her directly regarding the plan. We all get upset, though, and post things that we don't mean.

Regarding anyone who should have seen the PTS reports... well, I'd assume our forum admins and mods would have. And almost all of this was there for a good 3+ weeks before the patch went live. Then they come back and act like it's all news to them.

That's fair. Something stinks to high heaven about this, but the personal attack was pretty rude.

Agreed.

Maverick827 · November 2014

Essentially the problem is that the leader's of the game fancy themselves MMO royalty because of DAOC and believe their vision is best, regardless of what the players believe.

Nazon_Katts · November 2014

Maverick827 wrote: »

Essentially the problem is that the leader's of the game fancy themselves MMO royalty because of DAOC and believe their vision is best, regardless of what the players believe.

Now where have I heard that one before and how did it all end...

stunning · November 2014

phreatophile wrote: »

Robocles wrote: »

phreatophile wrote: »

stunning wrote: »

I love this statement " prevent a wide split among players" -- You know they just might be right there -- all the players that already have a vr14 toon will be happy and all the rest will quit playing and puff no wide split of players -- great plan Gina -- now they should put you back in the padded room

Totally inappropriate and unfair to Gina. She is a spokeswoman in this case. I'm certain none of this can be blamed on her. Padded room indeed.

You want to blame someone, try whomever is responsible for pushing a patch with this much wrong with it live. That person(s) had to have seen the PTS bug reports and chose to disregard them; had to have known how many things were borked with this one. At least someone wasn't surprised by this mess.

I'm going to agree with this to a point.

It isn't directly her fault. But, she keeps putting her name to what is demonstrably false and misleading information. I find it very hard to believe she (and the others who keep posting this crap recently) don't know this. It's a job, I get it. That doesn't mean I like what I'm hearing, though.

That said, @stunning shouldn't have attacked her directly regarding the plan. We all get upset, though, and post things that we don't mean.

Regarding anyone who should have seen the PTS reports... well, I'd assume our forum admins and mods would have. And almost all of this was there for a good 3+ weeks before the patch went live. Then they come back and act like it's all news to them.

That's fair. Something stinks to high heaven about this, but the personal attack was pretty rude.

rofl -- You say I attacked her personally -- you just said and I quote "she keeps putting her name to what is demonstrably false and misleading information" or without being politically correct -- you are saying she is a big fat liar. But giving her a little room that she really may have not known -- she still has to realize that if you ride with them you die with them

jeevin · November 2014

I think we need to refrain from attacks on individuals regardless. Zos is Zos. Sure the community managers are supposed to be our way of interaction with the company, but generally they just release information how and what they're told. I would hate for customers to take out their frustration on me because of the *** things a company I work for does.

Edit for spelling.

Valymer · November 2014

I believe the phrase is "shooting the messenger"

Blud · November 2014

Cuyler wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Hi everyone,

Due to the elimination of Veteran Points, you may need to rethink your leveling strategy a little from what you previously used to doing to gain a Veteran Rank. For example, the XP-per-kill ratio of a boss monster is not as good as the VP-per-kill ratio was before Update 5, but the amount of XP rewarded for that boss has not changed. Among other things, this change was necessary to make leveling a more predictable experience in preparation for the Champion System, and to prevent a wide split among players. We want to keep all the ways you gain experience equivalent, and not let a certain method become more worthwhile than others.

As reported earlier this week, we have identified a couple issues surrounding experience gain:
Monsters that are well below your level give slightly less experience than intended. This will be fixed in our next incremental patch.

The experience that you receive at the conclusion of a particularly difficult quest can reach a limit, and thus gets capped off. While the cap is there intentionally, it was set to level 50 values rather than VR values. This is being adjusted.

Note that experience gain buffs such as the Rings of Mara and normal grouping continue to give a bonus to your experience gain, and thus a faster rise within Veteran Ranks.

We hope this explanation helps a bit, but please don't hesitate to let us know if you have any remaining questions.

This is how I actually interpreted this as I read it:

Hi everyone,

We know if you were sick and tired of repeating the same quests over and over, you went to craglorn to grind out bosses for a modest amount of VP.

Because people were complaining that quests weren't giving enough VP as compared to crag grinds, we've decided that instead of increasing xp for quests like you asked, it's best if we nerf our endgame content so you all get the same slow xp no matter if your fighting craglorn monsters or if your fighting mudcrabs at v1. What we need all of you to understand is you should never want or need to reach v14.

We realize that most of you won't want to change your strategies to level as slow as a turtle so we're going to adjust the system to force it on you. This change should secure our subscription revenues for the next 20 years as long as players don't pull the wool off of their eyes and realize they're on a endless mouse wheel that generates income for us.

Note that your also now forced to group as well if your looking to get the infinitesimally small and unnoticeable increase in xp gains that we said everyone would get originally.

We hope that by telling you this you won't just unsub, so feel free to ask any more questions if that makes you feel better.

/sarcasm

This is my favorite post here ever.

JessieColt · November 2014

Valymer wrote: »

Wolfenbelle wrote: »

I completed Cadwell's Gold with my vr14 Templar on Saturday, then spent some time Sunday chasing a few delves and other things to complete the full Tamriel Trailblazer achievement. My journal confirms that I completed it on 11/9/14. I also completed all the quests and killed all the bosses in the Razak's Wheel dungeon in Bangkorai (and got a cool Dwemer spider pet as a reward when completing the last task of the last quest).

When all of this effort was completed, my Wykkyd's toolbar showed that my Templar had accumulated about 29% XP on the way toward whatever 100% will be for a vr14. Today, after downloading the patch, my Templar's XP was adjusted DOWN to only 11%, a massive 18 percentage point loss of XP overnight!!! Why? I don't understand what the last patch did to veteran rank XP or what today's patch did.

That's not all. My alt vr14 Sorcerer's XP is stuck at 99%, which means she's accumulated only 1% and has 99% more to obtain. I've done some quests and a dungeon with her in Deshaan, but the XP she needs is stuck at 99%, meaning I'm getting ZERO XP for those activities. Why? I don't want to repeat Cadwell's with this alt. I only want to level up some skills to try end-game content that I couldn't do while leveling her. Now it looks like that might not be possible.

This makes no sense. If this is a bug, it should be hot fixed ASAP. If it's intended, then it's truly nuts. What would be the point of doing anything more with a vr14 if the character doesn't earn any veteran's points or experience points?

My Templar has 7125 achievement points. If I keep chasing achievements with her, will she also be earning XP? If not, why bother doing anything?

The same thing happened to me (except from VR13 to 14) and I am really hoping that the patch Thursday boosts my percentage back up there closer to the next level (like it was before the patch)

Prior to the 1.5.3 patch the correct number to the next level was showing as 1.4million and change.

After the failed patch, Wykkd's is showing that the number needed to level is an even 4million.

This would be why it appears that the percentage gain went down.

As to why the level needed number is suddenly showing as 4 million instead of 1.4 million, I have no clue.

Ysne58 · November 2014

They have said elsewhere that this should get fixed with Thursday's patch and they are reducing the level requirement to 1,000,000 exp.

EQBallzz · November 2014

OK..so I have something sorta new (and embarrassing) to add. I saw a post in this thread or the other one mentioning something about incorrect info being displayed in relation to this XP issue. I have used Raetia Info Bar to report my XP for a while now and I was getting my XP info from that. Well...apparently it's not updated and reporting XP improperly.

So when I posted before that I started a V9 zone with 5% into level and after full completion was only 37% into V9 that is apparently inaccurate. Going back to the actual game UI shows that I'm actually 97% into V9. I still didn't gain a complete vet level but it appears to be much more than I was initially thinking. I could live with 90% of a vet level with full zone completion and the proposed change should be plenty.

I'm curious if others who were also reporting about 35% XP for a zone (like I saw) are also getting this info from an addon that is incorrectly reporting XP progress.

Vizier · November 2014

DigitalHype wrote: »

I also experienced this on my V10 Templar. I didn't notice it until today. As I was only playing my Sorc.

Prior to either today's patch, or last weeks update, my Templar's progress was reduced from about 80% (minimum) on the bar toward VR11, to less than 25%.

So, not only has VR->XP conversion resulted in throttling of the rate at which you would acquire VR rank, for completing quests/mobs/exploration, etc. There has also been a reduction in the existing percentage of progress toward the next level. At least for some (all?) VR characters.

From what I can tell the amount of XP needed to actually level went up dramatically. One day the amount needed was 1.4 million. The next day for the same level the XP needed to change a level jumped to 4 million. That would account for the change in percentage of XP earned.

Sucks. I utterly disgusted with ZoS's handling of this issue.

EQBallzz · November 2014

Stuck in between levels now. I hit VR10 but it just reverts back to VR9. Every time I kill a mob or explore a new area I level up and back down to VR9. I stopped questing and stuff because I don't want the XP going to waste but this is pretty stupid.

xarguideb17_ESO · November 2014

Why was this not fixed in 1.5.3?
The content of patch 5 is all nice (except the removal of forward camps of course) but why does this one stupid huge XP bug have to bother us for so long? How difficult is it to fix some basic math calculations?
This is a bug that affects most players.
A fix for this should be done and released in a matter of hours.

Edit:
Well, seems that ZOS had actually answered my questions before I threw them here in this thread:
http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/139480/patch-v1-5-3-what-happened/p1

That is very nice of them to explain what went wrong and actually apologize. Happiness level increased. :-P

djyrb · November 2014

Ysne58 wrote: »

They have said elsewhere that this should get fixed with Thursday's patch and they are reducing the level requirement to 1,000,000 exp.

I saw this as well, but haven't people reported that doing all the content in a zone (quests, dolmens, bosses, and delves) will only net you roughly 35% of a Veteran Rank? If that's the case, then hopefully adjusting the return for quest based on difficulty is still on the table. It still seems like players will be far too under-leveled going into a new VR zone and require them to seek extra sources of XP like mob grinding, Undaunted Pledges, PVP, etc. to even out.

Pallmor · November 2014

EQBallzz wrote: »

OK..so I have something sorta new (and embarrassing) to add. I saw a post in this thread or the other one mentioning something about incorrect info being displayed in relation to this XP issue. I have used Raetia Info Bar to report my XP for a while now and I was getting my XP info from that. Well...apparently it's not updated and reporting XP improperly.

So when I posted before that I started a V9 zone with 5% into level and after full completion was only 37% into V9 that is apparently inaccurate. Going back to the actual game UI shows that I'm actually 97% into V9. I still didn't gain a complete vet level but it appears to be much more than I was initially thinking. I could live with 90% of a vet level with full zone completion and the proposed change should be plenty.

I'm curious if others who were also reporting about 35% XP for a zone (like I saw) are also getting this info from an addon that is incorrectly reporting XP progress.

I'm getting a similar error with an updated version of Slightly Improved Experience Bar (updated Nov. 4th). It's showing a 4,000,000 XP requirement to level. It was working fine before the most recent patch this week.