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Info: Mob Level and Skill Gain

lol, spinal, i think we agree a lot:)
 
sostoned said:
ts very logical that the Level number is a product of variables. If the variables are changed the number will be changed

Variables are for example attack speed, attack strength, attack hit or misses, health, and so on

i guess its a lot of variables that they can change in a mob.

So they had to lower some stats to lower the level number.
Click to expand...

I don't think this is necessarily correct. I don't know about the <L10 mobs, but the main change in other mobs is that high regen mobs have become lower L number without any apparent change to their stats. What it looks like if the equation MA use to calculate mob level has been changed, with less weight assigned to mob regeneration (and possibly other things).

Spinaltapper said:
In the end this results in a game wide Nerf to skills gained vs. ped cycled in hunting since 90-95% of the mobs in EU had their levels reduced. Whether you call this a Nerf or an "adjustment" or EU is "dynamic" is up to you but the fact remains that skills will be slower in hunting now for all players.
Click to expand...

This isn't a thread about the nerf, it's about getting our facts straight. And quoting made-up (and inaccurate) figures like the 90-95% one there doesn't help anyone.
 
Jimmy B said:
I don't think this is necessarily correct. I don't know about the <L10 mobs, but the main change in other mobs is that high regen mobs have become lower L number without any apparent change to their stats. What it looks like if the equation MA use to calculate mob level has been changed, with less weight assigned to mob regeneration (and possibly other things).



If you will look in percentages instead of numbers you will see why.

Carabok from 10-4 is 60% less

some other from 80 to 72 is around 10% less

and high level means a lot of stats to lower while its not mentionable. see formula thingie in earlier post.

Its not strange to think that sort of basic loot is also a variable. So they can have changed other variables in higher level mobs.

In argonaut young the eye oil is changed to muscle. Level is from 7 to 5.


edit: my explanation of this is just a theory, but a theory that is pretty much logical for all things we see.

The system is per mob, so comparing two mobs for proof is pretty pointless. We can only see a change, not proove it really with numbers.

Only way is to have good figures is from before update and after update on the same mob.

The system as i explained is pretty clever. Before L numbers we could not figure it out really. But Mindark gave us Level numbers. Thats the only connection we have for understanding the system.

imo the level is a sum of variables. so actually the answer. We just dont know the sum to get to that answer.

i think level number is a key in understanding the skillsystem. But its not directly connected to anything. its all indirect, but surely affecting skillgain.
Click to expand...
 
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Jimmy B said:
This isn't a thread about the nerf, it's about getting our facts straight. And quoting made-up (and inaccurate) figures like the 90-95% one there doesn't help anyone.
Click to expand...


How many mobs had their level Increased rather than decreased? I bet that % is understated if anything. There may only be 1-10 mobs and their maturities out of the hundreds in game that actually had their levels Increased rather than Decreased. I really don't think anyone wants to fly around the entire universe though to check every maturity of every mob to see which ones increased and which decreased.

If we go with the consensus of what players have said all over the forums and in game though and you really want to point out %s then I'll re-phrase it simply to say that the "majority" of mobs have had their Levels Decreased which results in a Decreased amount of skills gained per ped spent for any player hunting a mob with Decreased mob level.

The facts that people are trying to get straight are laid out entirely in my post of how skill gains vs. ped cycled works on the previous page. Since many of us have tested it at this point it is pretty clear that this is accurate and further testing would simply verify what Xen, OZ, Stoned, Myself and other have been saying.

Unless hell freezes over and MA chimes in with some information... yea right... :laugh:
 
Spinaltapper said:
How many mobs had their level Increased rather than decreased? I bet that % is understated if anything. There may only be 1-10 mobs and their maturities out of the hundreds in game that actually had their levels Increased rather than Decreased.
Click to expand...

The change appears to have affected mainly small mobs, and high regen mobs. Generally, mobs that are neither small nor high regen have not changed or have gone up a few levels. I would guess that well under 50% have gone down, and more up (although by small amounts), but guessing is pointless.

Spinaltapper said:
I really don't think anyone wants to fly around the entire universe though to check every maturity of every mob to see which ones increased and which decreased.
Click to expand...

No need, we can just compare old and new L numbers on wiki, which stores a history of all changes. Quite a few mobs I looked up have already been updated.

But, again, this isn't really the topic of this thread.
 
Wow, this discussion is still going?

If anybody still cares and is not too hellbent on their own opinions, I'll say that while I was doing my spreadsheet which I asked help setting up for a few weeks ago, I was grinding Carabok. That was Before the nerf, obviously, and I kept very careful track of how much skill I gained per PED cycled. Now after the update, with same setup, on same Carabok etc. the skillgain per PED spent has reduced significantly on them, since the threat level was reduced.

I will not provide the actual numbers, because frankly, anybody can just cook up their own data, if they felt so inclined, so if you don't believe me about this, showing you actual numbers wouldn't make a difference, because they would probably end up being called fake, anyway.

What does this prove? Does it prove that there's a direct correlation between mob threat level and skillgains? No, they could be completely independent and MA simply nerfed the skillgain system separately (although frankly, this is less likely). The only thing it proved is that since VU 14 skillgains did get reduced on certain mobs. Period. No "and"s, "if"s or "but"s about it.

I hope this finally settles this debate for good now.
 
Conducted same test as in OP except with Thieves on Rocktropia. The Thieves have 10 hp and the spawn was about 75% level 2 and 25% level 4. The purpose of this test was to show that not only Carabok give increased skills over the level 1 punies on Calypso, in other words show that Carabok are not really special, it's the mob level.

Thieves

thieves.jpg


(once again combat relflexes is from mission reward)

Caud/Bery/Trip (from OP)

caudberytripskillgain.jpg



Much more skill gain from the lvl 2+ Thieves.
 
Spinaltapper said:
For 100 health-ish mobs I would suggest Foul Young (lvl 4 pre-patch) vs. Berycled Young (lvl 1 pre-patch) vs. Faucervix Young (lvl 5 pre-patch). These suggestions lead me to my next statements based on another quote and also stated in my original post.
Click to expand...

Lets see, 100 ped tt synthme into foul young:

remontoire said:
Cryogenics: 2729 -> 2769 (0.61 ped)
Concentration: 2763 -> 2770
Power Catalyst: 3083 -> 3088
Wounding: 2789 -> 2794
Click to expand...

and faucervix young

remontoire said:
Cryogenics: 2769 -> 2809 (0.65 ped)
Concentration: 2770 -> 2777
Power Catalyst: 3088 -> 3092
Wounding: 2794 -> 2800
Click to expand...

in both cases some adults / matures mixed in. not a big difference (or one i would call signifiocant) but also not very big samples.
 
Xen said:
Conducted same test as in OP except with Thieves on Rocktropia. The Thieves have 10 hp and the spawn was about 75% level 2 and 25% level 4. The purpose of this test was to show that not only Carabok give increased skills over the level 1 punies on Calypso, in other words show that Carabok are not really special, it's the mob level.
Click to expand...

Very good reports. But the other issue currently with Arkadia with the latest release is not just the skills from the Carabok. All mobs on Arkadia are now giving off less skills. It was just that the Carabok gave off some great Evade skills. Arkadia Officials stated that they are currently looking into this issue which most likely means they are probably yelling at MA asking them why they did this.

But I'm hoping that all will be set right tomorrow with the update but I have to say I don't think so since I've been camped on Arkadia just for the skills knowing it was to good to be lasting for long knowing that an update would soon have to be coming to change the skilling levels of the mobs there. And yes, I'll be more than happy to be very wrong.
 
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The big picture seems to be that skillgains on lower level mobs were decreased and most higher level mobs didn't change or went up. We can call it a nerf, or improvement depends to which player class we belong we either won or lost, or were unaffected.

It seems to be the pendulum effect, last year there was all this hullabaloo about the new player experience. Quite obviously this was the only reason why Carabok on Ark or Thief on Rock got their unusually high skillgain-per-pec properties. Now there's a problem with skillfarmers, and the pendulum moves back.

This part seems pretty clear and quite frankly, pretty fair. Skillgains should be proportional to the mob threat level, if things weren't properly balanced, then yes, go ahead and make it right.

We should forget the beginner-class mobs (Carabok/Thief) for now, and try to figure out what happened to the rest. Was the general balance affected? If so, yes, that would be indeed a serious nerf.

We need data.
 
Ill repeat it once more


Mindark stated to ark dev team thet skillgain wasnt affected by changing moblevel.

Its clear that that statement is untrue.

Thats the real issue, not or nerfing is done or not
 
sostoned said:
Ill repeat it once more


Mindark stated to ark dev team thet skillgain wasnt affected by changing moblevel.

Its clear that that statement is untrue.

Thats the real issue, not or nerfing is done or not
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No, it's not. The community has learnt not to trust words coming from the creators of this game. Real tests have proved time and time again that the information provided was flawed, partly incorrect, or lies, especialy information coming from support who claim this one time and that another time. Obviously the statement from ark was wrong.
The real point is that people claim a lot in this and other threads without providing the test date to backup those claims. Want to say Xen is wrong? Claim something else? prove it by testing it and provide the test data.
 
Xen said:
Conducted same test as in OP except with Thieves on Rocktropia. The Thieves have 10 hp and the spawn was about 75% level 2 and 25% level 4. The purpose of this test was to show that not only Carabok give increased skills over the level 1 punies on Calypso, in other words show that Carabok are not really special, it's the mob level. [see post for results]
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Great stuff. It looks pretty conclusive from your results that mobs of the same HP but with different mob levels give more skill gain.

What we don't know at the moment is how it scales with HP and mob level. Also I guess we don't know whether mob level is the determining factor, or the properties of the mob that determine the mob level.
 
Jimmy B said:
Great stuff. It looks pretty conclusive from your results that mobs of the same HP but with different mob levels give more skill gain.

What we don't know at the moment is how it scales with HP and mob level. Also I guess we don't know whether mob level is the determining factor, or the properties of the mob that determine the mob level.
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Did the regen rates drop a lot of mobs that lost a lot of mob levels, like fresco, furor, kreltin, aurli, spiders, carabok, etc.? Anyone? I have not heard reports of that. If the regen rates did not all drop, then it wasn't mob attributes that caused the skill gain drop, it was a system wide mob level formula change.
 
Fifth said:
The big picture seems to be that skillgains on lower level mobs were decreased and most higher level mobs didn't change or went up. We can call it a nerf, or improvement depends to which player class we belong we either won or lost, or were unaffected.

It seems to be the pendulum effect, last year there was all this hullabaloo about the new player experience. Quite obviously this was the only reason why Carabok on Ark or Thief on Rock got their unusually high skillgain-per-pec properties. Now there's a problem with skillfarmers, and the pendulum moves back.

This part seems pretty clear and quite frankly, pretty fair. Skillgains should be proportional to the mob threat level, if things weren't properly balanced, then yes, go ahead and make it right.

We should forget the beginner-class mobs (Carabok/Thief) for now, and try to figure out what happened to the rest. Was the general balance affected? If so, yes, that would be indeed a serious nerf.

We need data.
Click to expand...

It wasn't just small mobs that lost a lot of mob levels. So unless you still aren't convinced that mob level determines skill gain, it's not just small mobs where there is a drop in skill gain. It's not about small mobs vs larger mobs or lower skilled players vs higher skilled players.
 
Xen said:
Did the regen rates drop a lot of mobs that lost a lot of mob levels, like fresco, furor, kreltin, aurli, spiders, carabok, etc.? Anyone? I have not heard reports of that. If the regen rates did not all drop, then it wasn't mob attributes that caused the skill gain drop, it was a system wide mob level formula change.
Click to expand...

Feffoids dropped abut 1/3 of L levels and I don't think the regen rate went down.
 
I have been testing both regen rates and min/max loots both before and after vu, and although my sample size is small, I can say that regen was not changed (or min/max), while the L of the mob has..

Seemingly, MA just tightened down the L formula a bit, as before we had some very obvious mob L discrepancies and now seemingly they are all more in line with each other..

While the L of the mob may not be directly the sole indicator of the skilling value of a mob, remember that the L value is supposed to be a formula that takes into account all of the mob's stats together and roll it up into a neat little number.. and because of this, it probably is indeed the best indicator of skilling potential

lol circular logic :lolup:

A couple of thoughts:

maybe if someone wanted to test it, try to find 2 mobs of the same L and hp, but are very difft in other areas (attack speed, aggro, regen, etc) to see if there are any differences there. As in, are all mobs of the same L created equally skillwise?

Also, the L mob system is still fairly new in the big picture, it is very possible MA has been using this type of system behind the scenes for years to evaluate skill drops. We have no way of knowing this or what those behind the scenes #s were (higher,lower, same?) Be happy that we can at least monitor the L now, as who knows how many times things got adjusted behind the scenes to boost or curb skilling rates through the years..

008 :cool:
 
Xen said:
Did the regen rates drop a lot of mobs that lost a lot of mob levels, like fresco, furor, kreltin, aurli, spiders, carabok, etc.? Anyone? I have not heard reports of that. If the regen rates did not all drop, then it wasn't mob attributes that caused the skill gain drop, it was a system wide mob level formula change.
Click to expand...

Yeah, mob properties haven't changed generally; the mob level formula has changed presumably. Scratch that last sentence from my post, I wasn't thinking.

Xen said:
So unless you still aren't convinced that mob level determines skill gain, it's not just small mobs where there is a drop in skill gain.
Click to expand...

That's true, but at the moment we don't have a good handle on how much the bigger mobs that lost Lnum have been affected, because all the data so far is for low HP, low Lnum mobs.
 
Jimmy B said:
That's true, but at the moment we don't have a good handle on how much the bigger mobs that lost Lnum have been affected, because all the data so far is for low HP, low Lnum mobs.
Click to expand...

Bit like trying to figure exact armor plate decay rates for back in pre-gold. That info's as good as gone, but more important, it's useless now.

Instead of trying to detrmine and lament any changes, (enough info seems fairly nicely documented above to point toward a recent skill gain change that corresponds to L# changes) may I suggest best action from here on is to just study and record current L# effects on skill gains. Perhaps find a useful formula?

Seems a bit more useful. :D
 
JohnCapital said:
Bit like trying to figure exact armor plate decay rates for back in pre-gold. That info's as good as gone, but more important, it's useless now.

Instead of trying to detrmine and lament any changes, (enough info seems fairly nicely documented above to point toward a recent skill gain change that corresponds to L# changes) may I suggest best action from here on is to just study and record current L# effects on skill gains. Perhaps find a useful formula?

Seems a bit more useful. :D
Click to expand...

Yes, personally, finding out more about the relationship between HP, L#, anything else, and skill gains is what interests me here.

We can infer from what we find how it has changed though, and there will be some data sets out there from pre-VU14.
 
Had a scout around for some good mobs to test against in the higher HP category. Ideally I was looking for:

(i) two low regen mobs with same/similar HP and wildly different L#
or
(ii) two low regen mobs with same/similar L# and wildly different HP

It's a bit hard to look into it through wiki at the moment, as most of the L#s are wrong. So far the best I've found is:

Hogglo Provider L45, 2450 HP, low regen
Ambulimax Guardian L45, 1480 HP, high regen
Molisk Leader L45, 990 HP, high regen (and by far the easiest of those 3 imo)

Hunting just those maturities would be really tough though, the first two would be painstaking but possible, the latter would be ridiculous unless there's a better spawn than I've found.

I think I'll look for some (near)single-maturity spawns of things instead. Even if its slightly less good in terms of comparisons between L# and HP, it'll be way faster to build up a decent data set.
 
Jimmy B said:
Had a scout around for some good mobs to test against in the higher HP category. Ideally I was looking for:

(i) two low regen mobs with same/similar HP and wildly different L#
or
(ii) two low regen mobs with same/similar L# and wildly different HP
Click to expand...

You won't find either of those combinations.

(i) two low regen mobs with same/similar hp will have same/similar L#

(ii) two low regen mobs with same/similar L# will have same/similar hp
 
Xen said:
You won't find either of those combinations.
Click to expand...

I don't think it's impossible. Pre-change we had:

Falx Alpha/OA, L45, 3450/3470 HP, low regen
Hog Provider, L49, 2450 HP, low regen
Second Entity Gen 7, L70, 2510 HP, low regen

So that'd work nicely. Hog Provider is now down to L45, so it still may work if the Falx haven't gone up. I can't kill big Falx (or big SEG) though so it's moot :laugh:

I think max damage does play some part too, so what I need is a low damage mob and a high damage mob with similar HP I guess.

For instance, bit smaller than I'd like, but pre-VU Mermoth Domi was L12 with 590 HP and Gokibusagi Young was L12 with 280 HP. Both low regen afaik (?) but one is under half the HP of the other.

But two high regen mobs would be possible too, the Molisk Leader and Ambu Guardian combo would be good there if it wasn't for the bad spawns.

Anyway, just posting so that if someone happens to spot something that might work well they may think to post it.
 
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Just to jump in here a bit.

Yes L level equals stats. Higher L. higher stat gain. However L level is indirect.

I spent a good amount of time trying to figure skill gain out. While i don't have the fancy charts to post I have kept records.

Stat gain is directly related to the mobs stats that you kill. Plus a kill bonus. A list of some of the rough stuff that I believe goes into the L level.

DPS
Health
Regen
MOVEMENT SPEED*
Damage type
Damage type ratio
Evader level Min Profession
Evader Level Max Profession
Evader "curve"*
Max amount of evades possible when evader level maxed
Min amount of evades possible when evader level maxed
Max amount of evades possible when evader level min
Min amount of evades possible when evader level min
I have no doubt I am forgetting a few.

Evader "curve" is that you may have mobs with linear increase in evade chance, or weighted to the front or back end, etc.

Couple things I believe have been changed recently.

Movement speed used to be weighted a lot in the Stat gain. However since they have added vehicles among other things they have recently reduced this as far as stat gain goes.

Regen I believe they have reduce the weight of this as well. However they may have increased loot who knows.

Damage type/ratio.

I believe as more armor/plates have come out they decided to nerfed this part as well.


I believe things like damage type/ratio and movement speed played a high factor in why some mobs had crazy L levels but were easy to kill, while other mobs that were much harder to kill were much lower L value.
 
I tested two higher health mobs with close to the same cost to kill and very different mob levels. Old Jack's start with 1300 health but have a very high regen rate and with the weapon I was using took about 1570 damage to kill. Paneleon start with 1500 health but have a much lower regen rate and ended up taking about 1600 damage to kill. Two amps on each so very close to the same number of kills and kill bonuses.

L59 Old Jack

oldjack.jpg


L36 Paneleon

paneleon.jpg


Not an extensive test, but it seemed pretty obvious where this was going. 11.53 ped total tt skill gain from the Old Jacks, 8.06 from the Paneleons.
 
Nice one Xen, that's the sort of thing I was looking to do. Good thinking going to Cyrene.

Anyone still unconvinced?
 
Good work so far Xen.

In keeping with my previous post to say I'd post everything I knew, here is that post.

I had intended to post a few facts about the MOB LEVEL / SKILL GAIN relationship and follow this up with great swathes of detail and test results. I even wrote most of it!

However, since testing and retesting this post-nerf, I am not so sure about large parts of the detail.

I thought I was at a stage where I could prove that MOB LEVEL was in fact a non-integer - simply rounded into an integer for display purposes. But I have failed on that count for the time being. My long-term goal is still to be able to prove that.

All I can say with 99% certainty is that:

- There is definitely a relationship between SOMETHING-MOB-RELATED and the SKILL GAINS you get from that mob, and the SOMETHING-MOB-RELATED is heavily dependent on MOB LEVEL, as well as other factors. I have not ruled out MOB HP as a factor but if so there is more to it than just MOB LEVEL and MOB HP.

- At higher MOB LEVELs, the relationship between MOB LEVEL and SKILL GAINS gets diluted a hell of a lot. Xen has virtually proved that in this thread already.

- MOB LEVEL is not generated from any obviously VISIBLE mob stats. This is fairly obvious to anyone with a scanner but worth pointing out anyway.

Needless to say, I am still testing so I hope to find out a lot more soon. If anyone is 99% sure of anything I have not stated above then please say.

I have a fair few pre-nerf test results so I will be able to repeat those tests shortly to see if the MOB LEVEL / SKILL GAIN relationship itself was changed when the mob levels got changed 10 days ago. That should be interesting...

Here is something to keep the conspiracy theorists happy for a little while... On Arkadia post-nerf, the best two mobs to hunt for skill-gains per unit PED are Carabok Puny (still) and (lower end) Ostelok. Oratan are fairly good too if you're too embarrassed to be seen in Carabok country or if you want dodge. However... these happen to be just about the only three mobs on Arkadia with no grinding mission. Is that a coincidence I wonder..?

Have fun.

Forrest :)
 
Nice post.

ForrestPark said:
thought I was at a stage where I could prove that MOB LEVEL was in fact a non-integer - simply rounded into an integer for display purposes.
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Yes, as it seems almost certain now that mob level is calculated formulaicly based on mob properties rather than specified manually, it seems very likely that mob level will be non-integer and then rounded for display purposes. I guess the question is, if it does indeed directly influence anything, whether the rounded figure or the non-rounded figure is used for that purpose.

ForrestPark said:
On Arkadia post-nerf, the best two mobs to hunt for skill-gains per unit PED are Carabok Puny (still) and (lower end) Ostelok. Oratan are fairly good too if you're too embarrassed to be seen in Carabok country or if you want dodge. However... these happen to be just about the only three mobs on Arkadia with no grinding mission. Is that a coincidence I wonder..?
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Yeah, I can't believe I grinded all the way through the longtooth missions for the skills. The little skill bonus you get at the end doesn't nearly cover the rubbish skill gains you got during the mission.

Not all missions were like that though, the Evi one was very nice.
 
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