BlackSpectre

I just wanted to let y'all know that I'm getting ready to completely rewrite the Experience page. https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Experience I've been working on figuring out all the variables involved in calculating XP gain from critters, and I'm pretty sure I've figured out the formula which includes additional reference tables. It might not be right away as I want to sit down and verify the method for awarding mission completion XP rewards first. In the past when I've edited pre-existing pages, I've tried to make as few changes as possible, going so far as to keep even the formatting, organization, and wording in the page. That's my homage to the previous Paragon Wiki editors that came before me. However, there's enough new information about experience that it might be worth rewriting the entire page. I can say the information that's there now will be retained, more or less, but a lot more will be added and the organization of the page might need to be revamped. I won't be entirely sure until I actually do it and see what really needs to be done. My question is, would anyone like me to write up the new experience page and post it at the HC forums for you to look over before I edit the page? Or would you like me to do that on the page's talk page? or just edit the page with the option to revert it? This last option is easiest, but I'm open to alternatives.

I just went ahead and added a link to the Community Base Directory spreadsheet at the bottom of the Supergroup Base page https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Supergroup_Base. So now we're covered. If that's all you want to do @Dacy, I completely understand. I'm actually tempted to add another link to the Base Builders Cheat Sheet post at the Homecoming forum It's been THE most important base editing information that I've encountered. Although... a-hem! ... I haven't read any base building guides. Maybe that would be a good idea! LOL

I think adding a link to the directory a the bottom of a wiki page in the "See Also" section is perfectly fine. It would merely be a helpful link to a good off-wiki resource. Ah, OK. That totally makes sense. So really the main question you've been asking wiki peeps is whether or not it would be a good idea to have the wiki reflect what is on the spreadsheet. So my answer to that is whatever would be easiest to maintain. Frankly, the easiest thing would just be to add a link and be done with it. Other players can edit the wiki and add the information from your directory if desired, or you could tackle that project. Either way, once the information is at the wiki, you aren't required to monitor it. The rest of us can do that, especially now that we know that it's an issue. Exactly what I meant. When I think about maintaining 2 different sources that both change, it seems like too much work. And you're right, the amount of people that edit the base pages is small. So if you WANTED to maintain both spreadsheet and wiki, I'd have no objections but it would mean your attention would have to be split, and I know that can be a pain. I'm just trying to be helpful and positive, @Dacy. 🙂 Not that I think this would ever happen with you and @Easter Bunny, but what if the unthinkable happens and you both become unable or unwilling to continue to maintain your base directory? If the information is also at the wiki (or any wiki), at least players could still update it themselves and all the information wouldn't be lost. The converse is true as well, what if this wiki goes away? So having the same or similar information at 2 different places is not a bad idea. Personally, I think information about community bases that are useful to the general player population (such as the many teleport bases), is the most important base location information to host at this wiki. Information about personal bases that are accessible to other players to look at is nice as well, but not as important because it isn't immediately useful to as many players. Once in a while I do like going around to other people's bases to see what others have done, so it's not useless information in the least. And if you're a player who is interested in base building, then the open house bases are extremely useful as examples of what can be done! So I do think the base location information has a place at this wiki. I know @thunderforce is advocating removing the base information from the wiki, but I don't think that's necessary or desirable. I can live with it, though, as long as the information is available to players elsewhere and is easily accessible. So what do I recommend? Well, at MINIMUM, add a link to your directory at the bottom of the wiki page. If we do that, I think we're covered. If you want to rewrite or edit any of the base pages I think that's perfectly fine. I might say I even want you to do that! I couldn't ask for better people than you and @Easter Bunny to update the wiki's SG base pages. I trust your judgement @Dacy, especially when it comes to SG bases. You two are like THE SG base experts! I also think there's no reason for you to maintain the wiki info and provide oversight if you don't want to afterwards. As for automatic updates of the wiki pages from your directory, I really don't think that's necessary and it also makes things more complicated. Maybe just periodic updates done manually? That way we'd have a human looking at everything. Heck, I can even do that! It's a relatively simple task to convert a spreadsheet into a wiki table with the online tools that are available. I hope what I've said here is helpful to everyone. Warmest wishes from me to everyone involved. I appreciate your dedication, intelligence, and support. Glad to be in the same company with people the likes of y'all. 🙂

I think he meant what specifically in the content policy is significant? I looked through it myself and didn't see anything that conflicted, but my eyes are getting old. LOL

Is your Nvidia card an external card? Connected through USB-C? Is DirectX up to date? I assume you followed all of these steps? https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-set-an-external-graphics-card-as-a-main-card-NVIDIA-in-a-laptop I had a similar problem when I was setting up my old Intel NUC with a dedicated Radeon card (not external) and integrated graphics. The only way I could get it to work is to use the graphics drivers from the manufacturer's website. The drivers direct from AMD were not compatible with the NUC. You might try checking the Lenovo website for Nvidia drivers.

I've got the entire formula for XP figured out except for Team Weighting for XP distribution. What's worse is that the team weights factor has not yet come into play in any of my testing and calculations. I just keep it at 1 and everything has worked out so far. Either Homecoming has disabled Team Weighting or I just don't understand when and how to apply it. Anyone willing to take a stab at it or know how to use it? Here's the information I have about Team Weighting from dev comments in the definition file team_xp_weights.def: Here's is a sample from the definition file showing the bonus table. It's for "Stature 1" out of 10 statures, but all the statures have the same bonuses for the same levels. It's odd. Each stature is a spread of 4 levels, so stature 2 is min 4, max 8... and so on. There's an odd stature "2.5" inserted between 2 and 3, and then the last stature, 9, has a min/max level span of 10 levels instead of 4 (from 44-54). The only difference between the statures seems to be the "MinLevel" and "MaxLevel" span. { // Stature Level 1 // Levels specified in this file are ZERO-based. MinLevel 0 // inclusive MaxLevel 3 // inclusive // // The Above table is used when the character's combat level is above // or equal to the median of the team. Otherwise, the Below table is // used. (The first entry in each table should be the same; they are both // for when the player's combat level is the same as the median.) // // There should be an entry for each level in the game (50, for now). // same, +1, +2, +3, etc. Above 1.00, 1.05, 1.10, 1.15, 1.25, 1.50, 3.00, 6.00, 9.00, 12.00, 18.00, 25.00, 36.00, 52.00, 74.00, 105.00, 151.00, 216.00, 309.00, 442.00, 633.00, 906.00, 1296.00, 1855.00, 2654.00, 3797.00, 5434.00, 7776.00, 11127.00, 15923.00, 22785.00, 32604.00, 46656.00, 66763.00, 95536.00, 136709.00, 195627.00, 279936.00, 400580.00, 573217.00, 820256.00, 1173761.00, 1679616.00, 2403479.00, 3439304.00, 4921537.00, 7042567.00, 10077696.00, 14420871.00, 20635821.00, 29529222.00 // same, -1, -2, -3, etc. Below 1.00, 0.95, 0.85, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, } When I think of teaming, I know one of 2 things... everyone on the team is either the same level as the team leader or 1 level below due to sidekicking. That's a span of 1 level. So... the whole weighting thing doesn't make sense to me.

Genius! Great call guys! I was just about to update my post with "Actually, the team leader didn't get a penalty, but the alt got a boost!... somehow." Thanks guys. 🙂

So I've been slowly doing research on gaining experience, trying to figure out the formula, and I ran across something weird that I can't explain... At level 2 while SOLO against level 2 enemies I got these results: You have defeated Blood Brother Slammer You gain 10 experience and 7 influence. You have defeated Blood Brother Brawler You gain 10 experience and 7 influence. Then I dual boxed and added one of my alts to my team. The alt was level 2 also, and also was against level 2 enemies. The alt did not attack or do damage, and did nothing but follow me. I got these results: You have defeated Blood Brother Brawler You gain 7 experience and 5 influence. You have defeated Blood Brother Slammer You gain 7 experience and 5 influence. You have defeated Fallen Buckshot You gain 21 experience and 25 influence Notice that the XP gained from the minions is lower than when solo, and this toon was the team leader. Now let's look at the ALT's results for the same battle: Pat1 has defeated Blood Brother Brawler You gain 10 experience and 5 influence. Pat1 has defeated Blood Brother Slammer You gain 10 experience and 5 influence. Pat1 has defeated Fallen Buckshot You gain 31 experience and 25 influence. The ALT gained MORE experience while on the team than the leader... and did nothing in the battle. Does this strike anyone else as weird? It looks like there's a 32% XP penalty for being a team leader! UPDATE: I ran the test 3 more times and the 2 toons got the same XP on a team of 2. Very odd. I thought it might have been that the leader toon was in SG Mode, since that was the only difference, but it didn't pan out. I guess I'll just chalk it up to a glitch then.

My suggestion is to form a supergroup and recruit players who you enjoy playing with. PUGs (pick-up groups) or random teams have a tendency to be… random, unpredictable, and decidedly casual or indifferent. Nothing horrible about it. It’s just that different people behave differently and you can’t really change that. PUGs are like a box of chocolates… you never know what you’re going to get.

It should run fine on your Mac. is your ISP a cable company or using shared bandwidth with your community? Cable modems are decent but they are at the mercy of how many people are attempting to use the Internet at the same time. That may explain how at certain times in the day your Internet connection degrades.

I too have been mulling this over... The main problem as stated is oversight and management of the base data. Honestly, if @Dacy is willing to watch over and validate changes to the base info at the wiki, all problems are handled. An off site spreadsheet or document is not really needed at all, and will end up being yet another thing that needs to be managed. Conversely, the biggest problem with an off site spreadsheet is how difficult it will be for players to add or change their base info. Each step, each click matters. The wiki saves all information for every version of a page as it's edited over time. Restoring the page to a previous version is as easy as a few clicks. So even an off-site copy of the base data to safeguard it really isn't necessary. Having a copy of the data at the wiki and a copy of the data in an off-site spreadsheet effectively doubles the amount of work needed to maintain the information. But if an off-site spreadsheet is meant merely as a secure copy, I don't really have any problem with it other than it's extra work on the part of whoever is maintaining it. So overall, I do think the SG base data would be better to just be posted and maintained at the wiki without an off-site spreadsheet. This is not meant as a slight to anyone. It's just what I believe would be easiest for everyone.

I've been wanting to put up the Reward Scale data @AboveTheChemist and I have been working on and wanted some input from others on what to present and how. The mostly raw data is pretty much the spreadsheet that @ATC posted at the forum. I put it in a sortable table to make it more useful. You can take a look at it here https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/User:BlackSpectre/Testthis But there are other ways to present the data. I made an example page that illustrates 2 other ways here https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/User:BlackSpectre/RewardScale2 . The question is which way or ways to use, and which data to present?

Keep in mind that the median completion times derived from backwards processing the reward merit formula are from 2012 at best. Since the player base has become seasoned veterans and also have learned quite a bit about the game, todays times will probably be faster than any of the median times from 2012. I’m really enjoying this discussion. Lots of interesting details here. I think we need to focus on how long a “normal” run for trials and task forces take, rather than branching out to all of the various ways to do these tasks. There are quite a few variables that all impact how long a task will take, but the goal here is not to account for all variables, but rather to get a general idea of how long they might take for the average person… a starting point. After people have this info they can factor in all of the things that would impact the time themselves. However, in my view, the most significant omission to thinking about how long a task will take is recruitment time. For example, BAF might take 15 min to complete, but it can take up to 30 min to fill the league. so if I wanted to get an idea of how long the task would take in order to fit it in my schedule, I’d need to consider recruitment times too and that data doesn’t exist anywhere. For example, if I had a doctors appointment 1 hour from now, id need to not only consider that BAF takes 15-20 min to complete , but also that recruitment could take from 10-30 min. So I’d need to allocate a minimum of 25 min up to 50 min to do a BAF. Not enough time to do a BAF AND make my appointment. I see this happen all the time when a player joins a league thinking they can knock a trial out in 20 min, only to drop 15 min into recruiting because they realize they don’t have enough time. IT’s a conundrum.

Can you send us a link please?

Oops! Did not mean to leave out the villainous strike forces... STRIKE FORCE MERITS TO MEDIAN COMPLETION TIME ESTIMATION ** Calculated using the official reward merit formula Strike Force Name Merits Median Completion Time Player Times The Beast Beneath the Mountain 13 49 min Pirates of the Sky 42 147 min The Fire and the Flames 22 80 min The Temple of the Waters 24 87 min The Crystal of Serafina 26 93 min Time's Arrow 26 † 93 min Chasing Fool's Gold 40 140 min Lord Recluse's Strike Force 25 † 90 min The Lady Grey Strike Force 37 † 130 min Thus Spoke the Reichsman 20 † 73 min Trading Places 10 38 min Alpha Strike 40 140 min The Praetorian Offensive 40 140 min

I feel so left out… I WANNA BE REPORTED!! ingrates. 😉

So a MoBAF run is where the league attempts to get ALL of the badges that BAF awards in 1 run... the only badge we got was the debt badge! Let's see... what went wrong? 1) The tanks (there was at least 1 on each team) allowed the AVs to move far away from their spawn points. So that nixed the Gotta Keep 'em Separated badge. It also killed a bunch of players because they were so spread out chasing the AVs. 2) The league could not stop attacking when the AVs got to 5% health. That nixed the Strong and Pretty badge. We ended up abandoning the idea of a badge run, and just moved the AVs to the tennis courts like normal. Do you think the league killed the AVs at the same time? NOPE! The AVs re-spawned again 5 times!!! The league was able to kill the AVs at the same time in the end, with only 2 minutes to spare before the entire BAF timed out and failed. IT WAS CRAZY!!! I swear, part of me suspects there were some griefers on that league! Otherwise, well, the alternative just makes me too sad for humankind. 😉

Follow up: I did find out. For incarnate trials, the reward merits are tied to the drop tables. Basically anywhere there was an astral merit, 2 reward merits were added.

Here are the trials and their estimated median completion times calculated from the reward merits formula. If you happen to know the average times to complete these trials, please let us know and post them! Hero Trials Trial Name Reward Merits Median Completion Time Player Completion Time Death From Below 0 Reward Merits 11 min 11 min Cavern of Transcendence 8 Reward Merits 5 min 5 min Drowning in Blood 2 Reward Merits 8 min Terra Volta 27 Reward Merits 82 min Terra Volta 20 Reward Merits 61 min Abandoned Sewers Trial 28 Reward Merits 84 min Eden Trial 6 Reward Merits 20 min Terra Volta 20 Reward Merits 61 min Market Crash 20 Reward Merits 61 min Cathedral of Pain 11 Reward Merits 35 min Villain Trials Death From Below 0 Reward Merits 11 min 11 min Drowning in Blood 2 Reward Merits 8 min Tree of Thorns 14 Reward Merits 44 min Tree of Thorns 14 Reward Merits 44 min Tree of Thorns 15 Reward Merits 47 min Market Crash 20 Reward Merits 61 min Cathedral of Pain 11 Reward Merits 35 min I should mention what a median is vs a mean or average. Given a list of a bunch of times, the median is the time that happens to be right in the middle. So let's say you have these times: 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 5, 8, 55. The median would be 2. Whereas the average or mean is 8.44 (76 divided by 9). The median is often a better measure of the central tendency of the group as It is not skewed by exceptionally high or low values, which is what the devs use to calculate reward merits.

Oh, You mean to I should post this over in the beta threads. Got it! Thanks.

Hi, I was wondering if anyone happened to have the formula for how to calculate the amount of reward merits for incarnate trials? Maybe a dev? The completion times below that are based on the formula for normal, non-incarnate trials is obviously way off the mark, which makes sense since incarnate trials are a different animal than normal trials. Besides, incarnate trials didn't award Reward Merits until Homecoming's Issue 27 Page 4, which is where I got the amount of reward merits for each trial. Looking over the number of reward merits and comparing them to @Oklahoman’s trial completion times, it actually looks like a 1 to 1 ratio between reward merits and time. Meaning, 1 reward merit for each minute spent to complete the trial (60 merits per hour). Do you guys agree? NAME REWARD MERITS COMPLETION TIME (for normal trials) @Oklahoman Completion Times Behavioral Adjustment Facility Trial 18 55 min 20 min Lambda Sector Trial 20 61 min 12 min (speed run) 20 min (badge run) Keyes Island Reactor Trial 18 55 min The Underground Trial 40 118 min TPN Campus Trial 30 90 min 20-25 min Minds of Mayhem Trial 30 90 min Dilemma Diabolique Trial 30 90 min 20-25 min The Magisterium Trial 22 67 min 20 min Devs, the patch notes mention that "For Incarnate Trials we'll be adding a completion bonus reward of Reward Merits on-top of the current standard Empyrean/Astral Merit rewards valuing the total of what the standard conversion would've amounted to. Meaning you'll get the same number of Empyrean/Astral Merits as you were before Page 4 but also get the following on-top" Let's use the BAF trial as an example. In BAF, the most a player could possibly earn is 9 astral merits per run (it's typically 5-6 merits in most runs). The conversion ratio from astral merits to reward merits was 1 for 2, or 5 astral merits for 10 reward merits. 9 x 2 = 18. That checks out. So my question is really "Is this how incarnate trial reward merits were calculated or were they calculated base on the average completion time?" Thanks!

@Oklahoman do you happen to have completion times for these trials? Keyes Island Reactor Trial The Underground Trial Minds of Mayhem Trial

After looking over the reward merits for incarnate trials, and comparing them to typical completion times given by players, it looks like the reward merits for incarnate trials are awarded in a 1 to 1 ratio. Meaning, 1 reward merit for every 1 minute of the average completion time, or 60 reward merits per hour. If interested, you can see the data over at this post.

I previously used the 30 reward merits per hour rate that I originally gleaned from playing the game, but I didn't do any research on reward merits. It dawned on me that some of the variance might be due to awarding different amounts of reward merits based on the class of the task, and I was right. That is the case. All it took was a search through the wiki, and then perusing through about 50 pages of a thread on the original COH forums. Information from the Wiki on how the live devs calculated reward merits is below: Here's the hourly rate by class: Task Forces give an average of 1 merit every 3 minutes of average time (20 merits an hour) **This is incorrect. The ratio is about 1 merit for every 3.7 minutes of average time (16 merits an hour) as mentioned by Synapse in a correction. Actually, the ratio is more like 1 merit for every 3.75 minutes of average time (16 merits an hour) as born out by the official formula after the TimeModifier is factored in. Trials give an average of 1 merit every 2.5 minutes (24 merits an hour) **This is also inaccurate. The ratio is 1 merit for every 3 minutes of average time (20 merits an hour) as born out by the official formula Story Arcs give an average of 1 merit every 7.5 minutes (8 merits an hour). **This is also inaccurate. The ratio is about 1 merit for every 6 minutes of average time (10 merits an hour) as born out by the official formula The reason for this major difference is due to the considerable time and effort Task/Strike Forces can take to set up and complete, so naturally these tasks grant a much greater reward. Here's the formula the live devs used to determine merit rewards: (MedianTime / MPM) * TaskModifier * TimesRunModifier * Rounded TimeModifier + ArtificialModifiers Decimals in the result are dropped off (ie: the result is rounded down). MedianTime: The datamined median time to complete the task MPM: The desired Minutes per Merit, currently 3.7 TaskModifier: 1.5 if the task is a raid, 1.2 if the task is a trial, 1.0 if the task is a Task Force or Strike Force, and 0.6 if the task is a Story Arc TimesRunModifier: 1.0 if the task has been run enough times for the developers to be comfortable with the datamining, 0.6 otherwise TimeModifier: A percentage merit bonus equal to the median time divided by 20 (ex: the Synapse TF has a MedianTime of 194 minutes. 194 / 20 = 9.7, rounded up to 10% bonus) ArtificialModifier: Manually added bonuses or penalties to a given task; from Synapse: From Synapse: What I've used this field here in the past was to round out some villain strike forces that weren't granting enough merits for a random roll. For example: When merits were first introduced in Issue 13 beta the Temple of the Waters SF would have normally only granted 23 merits. However, I wanted players who completed this task to be able to purchase a random taskforce roll (which was then 25 merits, now it's 20) so I added a +2 bonus in this field. I've seen a number of players wonder why certain tasks (namely villain SFs) not have their merit numbers increase. This is because after the new data rolled in, I removed the bonus from this field if the task offered enough merits for the random roll. Example The Statesman Task Force has a datamined median completion time of 133 minutes. (133 / 3.7) * 1.0 * 1.0 * 1.07 + 0 = 38 merits

INCARNATE TRIAL MERIT REWARDS AND PLAYER COMPLETION TIMES ** The amount of merit rewards for incarnate trials are not calculated based on the medium completion time. Instead, reward merits are linked to the drop tables. Essentially, for every astral merit dropped, 2 reward merits are awarded. For every empyrean merit dropped, 10 reward merits are awarded. So completion times for incarnate trials cannot be calculated based on merit rewards. NAME REWARD MERITS @Oklahoman Completion Times Behavioral Adjustment Facility Trial 18 20 min Lambda Sector Trial 20 12 min (speed run) 20 min (badge run) Keyes Island Reactor Trial 18 35 min The Underground Trial 40 45 min TPN Campus Trial 30 20-25 min Minds of Mayhem Trial 30 35 min Dilemma Diabolique Trial 30 20-25 min The Magisterium Trial 22 20 min Incarnate trials didn't award Reward Merits until Homecoming's Issue 27 Page 4.