Game Mechanics XP Bank: A solution to overleveling in the early-mid game

Disclaimer: I partially stole this from Jacobi, but my way of implementing it is different.

I have noticed how every update, I manage to overlevel early on in the game. I understand that the early levels are supposed to go by fast in order to introduce new players to the game mechanics and such, but if you are going to introduce quality content, such as dungeon boss reworks (which currently do not scale to the player level meaning that overleveling effectively kills the difficulty of the encounter), then it would be important to look for a more permanent solution than simply increasing the XP curve every update.

This has gotten worse in the last two updates. With the introduction of caves and world events as even more xp for early game, I find myself up to 10 levels ahead of where I should be. Increasing the xp curve for players helps, yes, but it is an imperfect solution for those who want a challenge. Being even 1 level over in early game might give you an extremely important ability, like a new spell. A boss is made drastically easier as such.

I thus propose a feature known as the XP Bank as a gamemode or command. It is designed to ensure that you are not overleveled for any content in the content book. Effectively, it would lock your XP at 99.99999% for a level if you have not completed all the content up to that point. The excess XP would be stored in the XP bank, which is similar to a mana bank for my arcanists. Once you have all the content up to that level complete, XP from the XP bank would fill into your level (of course, you had enough excess XP to make you level up again then it would stop just short of the next level). In this way, no XP is ever lost, but progression is locked in a way to prevent overleveling. It also is a better solution than 50% guild xp, which I often use to slow progression but of course, lose XP as a result. All XP is accounted for with this.

And now, for the problems. This CANNOT be a default for classes. It is an option given to you from the start, and should maybe be togglable. Another problem I foresee is "what counts as content?" Caves, world events, quests, dungeons, boss altars, raids, discoveries (i will just say all 3 for now), and lootrun camps, sure, but what about mini-quests? Would those be included, especially considering that most are prof quests, something that honestly should not really be mandated for such a feature? It would preferable if one could toggle which categories one wishes to include for the level locking.

I am not saying that this fixes early game overleveling for everyone as such a feature would be an optional mode, but such a feature would allow for proper player scaling and provide a challenge for players. I don't think this would be THAT difficult to implement, but it's more of a question of "would people use it?" Thank you.

 

I feel like it should definitely be toggleable but otherwise nice idea.

 

I'd implement this in the following way:

• You can set the XP bank to store a percentage of XP. Alternatively, you can set it to halt you 1XP before leveling up.
• The withdraw XP command allows you to withdraw enough experience to go up a level, to withdraw an arbitrary number of XP, or to do the latter, but send the XP to your guild as if you'd used GXP.

Forcing you to be totally completionist is not something I think should or would be added*, especially since you might be struggling with a certain piece of content and therefore want to level up. To be fair, you could just toggle the XP bank off for a single mob kill to get a level, but that's a bit annoying IMO. Thus, instead of having to manage what content you'll be blocked by, being able to withdraw XP at the time you want it makes more sense.
*especially since a lot of the content is currently not worth doing - see: a large number of Wynn quests