Official: ESN - Transfer Effect

[Fallen]

On the third day of ESN, TRANSFER has been updated to no longer give experience immediately upon transferring a wound. Instead, the experience that would be gained is stored in a 10 second effect, unique to each player healed, which is refreshed by further transfers. After 10 seconds of not healing, the empath will be awarded all of the experience at once. To go along with this, the healer will be made aware when the effect has enough experience stored in it that it will completely fill their minds in case they want to share with other empaths.

The goal here is:
1) To stop each successive wound transfer from being subjected to a harsher experience penalty from having a fuller mind. The net result is more experience from healing multiple wounds at once.
2) It is being used for something else you'll find out about on another day of ESN!

I'm very aware that this is likely to cause some confusion, so I am happy to answer questions/concerns as always.

Enjoy!

PS: I'm going to follow this post up with an example showcasing an example of #1.

~ Konacon

This message was originally posted in Empaths, Developer's Corner - Empaths. To discuss the above, follow the link below.

http://forums.play.net/forums/19/232/2595/view/422

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[Fallen]

Hi everybody! Here are a couple examples of how this transfer effect changes experience gain in a positive way (Note: numbers are not 100% accurate, but do accurately portray how this works):

1) An empath with 0 experience stored heals a patient with 6 wounds worth experience values: 100, 75, 75, 50, 50, 50. Under the old system, the empath would get a total of 374 experience whereas the new system would award them with 400 experience.

2) An empath with 200 experience stored heals a heavily wounded patient with wounds worth 150, 150, 100, 100, 100, and 50. Under the old system, the empath would get a total of 522 experience whereas the new system would award them with 585 experience.

3) An empath with 500 experience stored heals a patient with a lot of minor wounds worth 80, 70, 60, and 7 wounds worth 50. Under the old system, the empath would get a total of 380 experience whereas the new system would award them with 420 experience.

Konacon, can you help us understand the rationale behind the modified method of exp award/absorption? Not saying it's bad (I'm truthfully still confused, but am testing). Just curious about the motivation for this change, either on its own or in cooperation with the others on your ESN docket.

Happily! One of the biggest issues with trying to sit in town and heal is that it feels very feast or famine. Meaning you often feel like you are either fried with 10 more patients that all need healing, or you're fresh and clear hoping to god for another patient to come in before you go clear as a bell. That really isn't a lot of fun.

So to fix that, we wanted to give an overall experience increase and make it so that each wound you heal from a single patient doesn't get penalized heavier on experience. This helps to stretch out the experience gain when you're only getting a patient once in a while, making the famine less noticeable.

2) It is being used for something else you'll find out about on another day of ESN!
A way to access saturated levels for a healer?

Not quite... But I hope you'll like it anyways!

Does this "transfer effect" boost the amount of exp gained based on how long the timer has been running?

No, it does not.

There's penalty to gaining EXP from transferring wounds with exp in the bucket? (if so, this is something I wasn't aware of before)

It's not just transferring wounds. There is a penalty to gaining experience from everything with exp already in your mind. As your mind gets fuller and fuller, you get less experience from things.

If we keep transferring after it would fill our heads when we get the exp, does the extra EXP stay there until another pulse(s) hits and top it up until it runs out?

No. When your head would be full, that's it. It will just be full when the effect runs out.

~ Konacon

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[audioserf]

Meh.

[Taernath]

I didn't know about the xp penalty either.

I don't really follow how a 10 second delay will help in 'feast or famine' situations, but maybe the second part of the announcement will clarify.

[n0551n3n0m1n3]

From what i gather this makes it so you now get a warning before healing a wound that will bring your exp pool to maximum after the delay, allowing empaths with full minds to be aware of it and share those extra wounds left on the client.

[khorpulent]

Not actually sure I like this change. The little bit of extra exp is nice, but I liked the instant feedback from the old system.

I guess this makes it simpler when healing someone with a lot of wounds (i.e. warcamp or implosion victim) when you plan on using a longterm boost. With the old way, you had to heal the wounds and use the boosts in a fairly precise order if you wanted to get the maximum exp. Now I guess you can just fill your head and use the boost without thinking about the order you take the wounds.

There's also a chance you actually get less exp if you're healing with an empty head and a pulse occurs before the exp actually makes it into your mind.

[Viekn]

Not actually sure I like this change. The little bit of extra exp is nice, but I liked the instant feedback from the old system.

I've never played an empath, but is a 10 second delay a big deal?

[Fallen]

Hi everybody!

Thinking about this, I wanted to come in with a less mechanical explanation to this that might help some people who don't want to know all the number-y things.

Essentially, this update means that you don't get experience right away when transferring from people anymore. However, you will get more experience overall for healing. To deal with things like sharing incinerated victims, you will get the message "You get the feeling that your mind will need to rest soon." as an indicator that your mind will be full if you stop healing. (Note: This message doesn't get generated if your mind is already fried, because I figured that would just be irritating.)

~ Konacon

[khorpulent]

I've never played an empath, but is a 10 second delay a big deal?

Not that big of a deal. But considering I'm still playing a text-based game in 2017, it's no surprise that I'm resistant to change.

[Overlordz]

I didn't know about the xp penalty either.

I was wondering if this was common knowledge. It's one of those mechanics I always forget about and wonder if it's real or something I imagined reading once.

Had to dig around the wiki a bit, it's not on the main 'Experience' page but is described in the 'Experience Pool' page (totally a tangent, but these seem like they could be one article)

These rates that are described in the above sections are all ideal rates, and based on the character gaining the experience with a fairly empty unabsorbed pool. As the amount of experience in the unabsorbed pool increases, the efficiency of adding to it decreases. For example, if one were to kill 2 rats at level 1, one would expect to (and would gain) 200 experience. However, if one kills 8 rats, one would add less than 800 experience to the pool. The precise rate of accrual decline is:
Accrual Decline Rate = N * (1 - .05 * ⌊InBucket/100⌋)

If I'm reading this right, if you have 800 experience already in your pool, getting a same level kill (or healing a wound) that would normally net 100 experience will instead give you 60.