I put some effort into writing up the simplified outline of the logarithmic character growth and its benefits and a basic implementation model.
Logarithmic Character Power Growth by Level and its Effect on MMO Game design
Logarithmic Character Power Growth, over linear or exponential power growth, enables a larger cross section of players to meaningfully play together, utilizes a much larger percentage of developed game world, removes the value of a mentor system, limits mudflation, and eliminates the need for continual level cap content development.
Logarithmic Character Power Growth is characterized by a short period of very fast power growth, followed by a short period of linear power growth, ending with a long and very shallow power growth period extending to level cap. When coupled with an exponential increase in the number of kills required to level 80%-90% of character play time occurs while in the shallow power growth period. This makes designing game zones for the shallow power growth period the most efficient use of development time.
To differentiate between the beginning and end of the shallow power growth period characters gain situational utility powers of increasing complexity rather than increasing the magnitude of primary offensive/defensive/healing powers. To make these utility powers meaningful Monster tactics and environmental effects would grow from simple tank and spank at the beginning of the period to extremely challenging dynamic battle field conditions and monster mixed unit tactics at maximum level.
This focus on utility powers, over significant magnitude increases, for the shallow growth period has two primary effects. First while a fully developed character may have up to 20% higher magnitude over a character just beginning the shallow growth period the primary abilities that differentiate either end of the shallow growth period will not come into play when fighting content created equivalent to the beginning of the period. This will permit characters to play down to earlier zones within the shallow growth period without removing the challenge or danger, it will just be easier. Conversely characters at the beginning of the shallow growth period could meaningfully participate in content tuned to the end of the period, assuming they had the required gear to participate, but without the situational utility skills odds of death significantly increase and other party members will be required to cover for the combat responses typically covered by the under leveled player’s class.
To further facilitate the natural progression of the logarithmic power growth the initial fast power growth period can be contained within the starter zone which doubles as an in-game tutorial. The starter zone can be designed for solo or small group play so that a player is introduced to each of the primary abilities that define their character class and how to use the GUI.
The linear growth period can be sub divided into a beginning and end phase. The beginning phase geographically can take you from the tutorial zone to the closest city. This major city can be used to introduce common in game interactions and things such as trade skills. By the time a character is more or less done with the first city and it’s near vicinity the character can be encouraged to travel to the nearest capital to receive their final primary skills.
The trip to the capital and the required class quests will mark the end of the linear growth period and the beginning of the shallow growth period. Ideally the final class quests will introduce challenging group content that will require characters to form groups to complete the quests. This simple grouping will hopefully prepare the players for the shallow growth period where virtually all content will require a group of some kind and the higher level content will require well balanced groups with increasing abilities and player skill.
Most of the “paths” between the different capital cities and the nearest of the smaller cities should be tuned to the end phase of the linear growth period. This way characters at the beginning of the shallow growth period can travel solo to the small city they wish to adventure out from. Cities further from the capitals will likely require specialized skills or groups to reach safely. This structure will prevent the ghost town effect as player’s level out of the linear phase and into the shallow growth phase as the primary leveling areas are also the primary over land travel routes. Other than the tutorial zone, and its path to the nearest city, characters of maximum level would have compelling reasons to be in all the remaining zones in the game. Players who are also primarily interested in crafting, RP and trading would be able to stop leveling their characters at the beginning of the shallow growth period without isolating themselves to just the starting zones allowing for alternative play styles.
From a game marketing perspective the trial period of game could extend up to but not through the finally class quest, doing the final turn in will require the account to be a full account. Additionally all further expansions can be broken down into new story lines and sequels to existing story lines. New story lines would signify a new sequence of zones and challenges from the beginning to the end of shallow growth period. Sequel expansions can add additional maximum challenge content and or new environmental and combat challenges while not increasing the magnitude of the character power at maximum level. A combination of the two expansion styles would be taking an already created sequence of zones and updating the look and feel as well as the in zone story lines while also introducing new styles of challenges at the end of the shallow growth period.
I have made a google spreadsheet with nice graphs and break downs of the different power curves both for players and Monsters as an example of the background math.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PLlPGFOgdNjdN-33D4SrCq4rjd4cB5TBklMUI3mWwLU/edit?usp=sharing
Thank you for reading the recap,
Trasak
Trasak,
Good post, and I agree with previous posters that the your proposed system would nearly mirror level scaling. You would still see minor incremental gains versus mob level, but it would be a system where you could theoritically go to nearly any zone due to the very small incremental increases in power. Think of EQ and a zone like Unrest - if I only gained 100ish hps throughout the entire progression from 20-30, even with new skills, a Festering Hag wouldn't have been much more difficult than a Ghoul. And, I do think this is your intended consequence as it smooths out the gap where players can't group with others and all zones are more relevant.
However, if you still have resists, misses etc. based off mob level, then the logarithmic leveling would truly only slow mudflation of stats versus offering any true solution to empty zones, etc. The only solution I see to this is to completely overhaul the system and have progression based off something other than levels, such as skill based with Elder Scrolls Oblivion/Skyrim, which, again as others have stated, I think would be fun to test in a different MMO (Project Gorgon has skilled based progression which has a lot of good ideas), but I wouldn't want to see Pantheon overhauled to test it.
I know several of us have linked this Wolfshead thread before, and while I don't think EQ did everything right, I do think they nailed it with this:
http://www.wolfsheadonline.com/the-everquest-paradox/
The article can be summarized as player characters are the strongest at level 1 compared to NPCs and grow exponentially weaker versus NPCs as they level.
*Edit* - Saw that you responded back to Vandraad in an early post in regards to hits/misses being based off other variables than leveling; however, if you did this, I think you would only delay the inevitable of empty zones, and/or, reduce mob damage/hps/etc. that you are really only seeing smaller #s, than truly accomplishing removing the issue. Think, 100 hps being hit by 10, versus 1000 hps being hit by 100.
Raidan said:*snip*
http://www.wolfsheadonline.com/the-everquest-paradox/
The article can be summarized as player characters are the strongest at level 1 compared to NPCs and grow exponentially weaker versus NPCs as they level.
*Edit* - Saw that you responded back to Vandraad in an early post in regards to hits/misses being based off other variables than leveling; however, if you did this, I think you would only delay the inevitable of empty zones, and/or, reduce mob damage/hps/etc. that you are really only seeing smaller #s, than truly accomplishing removing the issue. Think, 100 hps being hit by 10, versus 1000 hps being hit by 100.
The real catch-22 is that all MMOs to date have been logarithmic when compared to time played rather than level when you look at each expansion as an individual game. On average for the industry it is much easier to level to maximum level than it is to get all the best gear available at maximum level. For a given expansion most characters spend most of the time at maximum level and only gain power as they swap out pieces of gear, which one by one is usually a very small increase in power.
Mudflation and ghost towns usually begin appearing when the level cap is raised and a new step is added to the end of the previous log scale. Old endgame zones are usually some of the emptiest as they are no longer worth the challenge for the rewards that they give as the first tier of leveling gear in a new expansion usually matches the best gear at the end of the previous expansion. As the level cap increases the number of players in each leveling zone goes down assuming the same number of people are leveling from 1-Max at a given time. This thinning of the available players at the appropriate level will additionally cause ghost towns as they congregate in the most effective zones for getting groups.
By designing the leveling power curve to also match the time power curve you can utilize fewer development resources to fully complete the game. Additional development resources can then be put into additional, equal value, options for users and those resources retain their value for a very long time rather than immediately depreciating at the start of the next expansion.
I had actually considered suggesting that HP Attack and base stats effectively cap at level 30. The additional 25% of power magnitude comes purely from gear gained through significant effort. What you get from level 30-50 is advanced skills and an increased chance for your base skills to succeed, going from 60% success rate to 80% success rate at level 50.
An example of an advanced skill would be the wizard getting and ice root spell at level 10ish but at level 40 gains access to ice wall. Ice wall would be a ground target spell that freezes anyone too close to it and blocks line of sight until it melts or is destroyed. Additionally ice wall can be used to protect the group from monster cast wall of fire.
Monsters on the other hand scale in a linear manor from 30-50. Some of that scaling is purely magnitude but the true increase comes in the form of gradually increasing decision trees. Things like if you pull a guard after using Mez on his neighbor after Mez wears off the second guard will become concerned about his partner being missing. In earlier zones he will walk towards where his partner actually is, eventually jumping into the fight. In later zones he will call for backup before moving out and a healer will come with him. Eventually you will face encounters with two heavy hitting melee mobs, a ranged DPS mob, a healer and a Mage. The mobs themselves will actively work to counter act your crowd control after the initial CC ends, the ranged DPS will target your healer and their healer will support while fleeing your dps.
I would personally prefer to see VR put more time creating modular challenging encounter design over making zones that will become ghost towns.
@Trasak,
I understand your points and I agree with most of them, but let me address your point of old world content being irrelevant post new expansions. You obviously have a point that characters move on to shinier, new things, but, using EQ as an example, you could level in Guk, Sol B, and Kedge extremely fast as your level (and/or gear with Kunark) far exceeded the intended level range for the zones at launch. You do have a point though, and I have shared some thoughts on keeping older zones relevant in other threads:
http://pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/4532/vanguard-post-postmortems-too-big-to-socialize/view/page/1
http://pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/2389/please-plan-ahead-for-progression-servers
But, as to your main point in your post - I think you're simply trading measuring sticks and what you want to determine progression. Ultimately, to keep getting increases, gear will have to effectively be better than another piece with each expansion, or DLC content, or whatever the new timeframe of content release may be. So, ultimately, players would still continue to move to new expansions for the new gear.
Or, even if you capped everything skill/ability, etc. at level 30, and gear mainly remained the same, with perhaps different resists ec. changing per expansion to keep all old content relevant versus trending upward - you're going to have players have content fatigue (just coined it) and still move on to the newer shinier zones anyway as they would be burned out rehashing content that no longer has relevance. And, I'd argue, you'd have even more of a problem because without seeing some meaningful progression, players will become bored, quit, and you'll have ghost towns for alternative reasons.
At least to me, one of the best aspects of an MMO is the meaningful progression where you can return to a zone 20, 30, or 40 levels later that may have been extremely challenging or even impossible, and you truly have a good gauge of how much your character has advanced. I think if you lose that, you also lose a great sense of satisfaction of character progression.
And, one final thought - we are 100% agreement on improving Monster/NPC AI though, and, I do like the idea that as their spell/skillsets/level improve, the AI does as well.
It will be interesting to see how the progeny system affects this. For example, if it was linear, but you could live an infinite number of lives that might be better than having a really steep curve.
Raidan said:
@Trasak,
*snip*
But, as to your main point in your post - I think you're simply trading measuring sticks and what you want to determine progression. Ultimately, to keep getting increases, gear will have to effectively be better than another piece with each expansion, or DLC content, or whatever the new timeframe of content release may be. So, ultimately, players would still continue to move to new expansions for the new gear.
Or, even if you capped everything skill/ability, etc. at level 30, and gear mainly remained the same, with perhaps different resists ec. changing per expansion to keep all old content relevant versus trending upward - you're going to have players have content fatigue (just coined it) and still move on to the newer shinier zones anyway as they would be burned out rehashing content that no longer has relevance. And, I'd argue, you'd have even more of a problem because without seeing some meaningful progression, players will become bored, quit, and you'll have ghost towns for alternative reasons.
At least to me, one of the best aspects of an MMO is the meaningful progression where you can return to a zone 20, 30, or 40 levels later that may have been extremely challenging or even impossible, and you truly have a good gauge of how much your character has advanced. I think if you lose that, you also lose a great sense of satisfaction of character progression.
And, one final thought - we are 100% agreement on improving Monster/NPC AI though, and, I do like the idea that as their spell/skillsets/level improve, the AI does as well.
Realistically you are 100% correct. For log power growth to "feel" like you were progressing after you hit the slow growth period it would have to be in some meaningful horizontal way rather than vertically through level power. The additional levels are there mostly to give you something to continue to work towards character wise while you built up gear and experienced new content.
For content progression I was envisioning 4 different end goal raids. Each requiring their own special gear and weapons to complete. These items would be gained from the tiered, flagged, zones in the story line with these 4 raids. A 5th raid would then require completing all 4 previous raids to access that would combine items from all 4 raids into one set.
A new expansion could add another 2 or 4 raids and the lead up zones attached to them with another over arching raid. This new set of zones would have nothing to do with the original 4 sets of zones story wise but could be worked through by a level 30 character at nearly the same speed as characters already at maximum level.
I use raids as a way of signifying the hardest challenge of a story line that takes the most effort and skill to complete. Non raiders will still have plenty of reasons to run these story lines as well just in a lesser way.
The true progression for all characters would be tied into the benefits of the Perception system for completing content. Ill leave it up to VR to come up with good motivators.
endylendari said:
It will be interesting to see how the progeny system affects this. For example, if it was linear, but you could live an infinite number of lives that might be better than have a really steep curve.
I wanted to address the point of power creep while leveling in another post, but this is a perfectly good thread to add as it is touches the topic.
I strongly feel that the character power should increase lineary but the XP curve should be exponential.
i.e. the power increase from level to level is the same, but the "time" to level up increse each level.
it is almost an MMO staple that when you level up you get much stronger than you were previous level, I believe this is wrong, I believe that the source of character power should become from the number of availible choices and not from the amount of damage the character can absorb and inflict.
higher level characters should get more abilities, more ability types (defencive, CC, offensive etc), longer durations, shorter cooldowns and wider AOEs, rather than higher damage and higher hit points, of course when you level up you get more HP and you deal more damage with a hit, but this should not be the main source of the character power.
in most of the games today, if you put two naked characters one in front of the other and then they only use auto attack on each other, the higher level character will probably 2 shot the lower level while the lower level character will miss all his hits.
I believe that this is the wrong way to balance the game, IMHO the proper way to balance such scenario is that the higher level character will "kill" the lower level character while he is at ~33% HP.
but if these characters used all their skills and not only auto attacks, then the higher level character would have won with 70% of his HP.
for example: if level 10 character has 200 hp and 40 damage, then level 30 character should have 300hp and do 60 damage, but the level 10 character have two attack skills, one CC skill with short duration and one defense skill.
level 30 character will have four different attack skills,(single target low CD, single target dot, low damage but front cleave and high damage high CD) one reactive skill, one weak CC with short duration like knockback, one CC with long duration like slow, one defense skill that increase avoidance one defense skill that grant damage reduction.
what do you think?
Rydan said:endylendari said:
It will be interesting to see how the progeny system affects this. For example, if it was linear, but you could live an infinite number of lives that might be better than have a really steep curve.
At birth, my great-great-great-great grandson will have access to everything, wear plate, max resist, dual wield champion, have 2 rare swords and be 10' tall? (j/k)
I'm excited to see how they do this. One of the things I want to test if not THE thing.
MyNegation said:I wanted to address the point of power creep while leveling in another post, but this is a perfectly good thread to add as it is touches the topic.
I strongly feel that the character power should increase lineary but the XP curve should be exponential.
i.e. the power increase from level to level is the same, but the "time" to level up increse each level.
it is almost an MMO staple that when you level up you get much stronger than you were previous level, I believe this is wrong, I believe that the source of character power should become from the number of availible choices and not from the amount of damage the character can absorb and inflict.
higher level characters should get more abilities, more ability types (defencive, CC, offensive etc), longer durations, shorter cooldowns and wider AOEs, rather than higher damage and higher hit points, of course when you level up you get more HP and you deal more damage with a hit, but this should not be the main source of the character power.
in most of the games today, if you put two naked characters one in front of the other and then they only use auto attack on each other, the higher level character will probably 2 shot the lower level while the lower level character will miss all his hits.
I believe that this is the wrong way to balance the game, IMHO the proper way to balance such scenario is that the higher level character will "kill" the lower level character while he is at ~33% HP.
but if these characters used all their skills and not only auto attacks, then the higher level character would have won with 70% of his HP.
for example: if level 10 character has 200 hp and 40 damage, then level 30 character should have 300hp and do 60 damage, but the level 10 character have two attack skills, one CC skill with short duration and one defense skill.
level 30 character will have four different attack skills,(single target low CD, single target dot, low damage but front cleave and high damage high CD) one reactive skill, one weak CC with short duration like knockback, one CC with long duration like slow, one defense skill that increase avoidance one defense skill that grant damage reduction.
what do you think?
If I'm understanding this correctly, you're saying that character power increases are linear - Level 10 - 100 hps/10 damage; Level 20 - 200 hps/20 damage; Level 30 - 300 hps/30 damage, etc. If you are, I believe I'm missing your point on how this is vastly different than say EQ. EQ was a combination of linear/exponential (I'd argue mainly linear) with the expontential side mainly related to HPs/Magic based on STA/INT increasing as levels did.
I believe what you're proposing (if I'm understanding correctly) instead of linear leveling, is similar to the OP's point on removing "Levels" as an obstacle to hit/miss a mob. So a level 10 could group with a level 50 without having a penalty outside of the linear gains from 11-50. Which, again, I wouldn't really be for as you'll ultimately trade a measuring stick.
Ultimately, I'm not aganist having lower stat gains to reduce mudflation, but you'll simply be trading a mob hitting you for 100 with say 25, and you still will have the same result.
None of the above.
It should be asynptotic, exponential or logarithmic both contribute to mudflation , the exact opposite is what is needed.
Players get a sense of accomplishment advancing early, but as the game goes on, everyone kid of catches up (somewhat) which eliminates the "left behind" issues in other modern MMORPGs
Players who are truly hard core and put in more time will, of course be farther ahead but each advancement is harder than the last, not easier!
Just for a bit of encouragement, I passed the link to the doc onto the devs and they loved it and said great job! They have a very similar system in place that works well for us that follows a very similar format to your doc and they were impressed with your overview, so thank you mate :)
Kilsin said:Just for a bit of encouragement, I passed the link to the doc onto the devs and they loved it and said great job! They have a very similar system in place that works well for us that follows a very similar format to your doc and they were impressed with your overview, so thank you mate :)
Thank you for the words of encouragement, I would have said thank you earlier but I was away from the forums over the holidays. If I end up at the same conference as VR at some point for work I'll stop by to see if anyone wants to talk nerd shop over a few rounds.
Trasak
I see each step between classes being able to use that logarithmic progression as you suggested. It could work here as well. Not just for adventurers.
When we're talking about amount of damage being done to a mob.. I translate it into..making progress while crafting. (this is as you will know as well, also about numbers rather than a bar moving foward.)
When it comes down to grouping with lower levels, I'm not sure how I see that working out, unless you get groupbonus on crafting stats when grouped. And the higher your crafter level the better the bonus for others in your group. (Risky i think because, people might just band together as high leveld players to get the best bonuses, ditching the starting crafters. And the lower crafter would be leeching from the higher one's bonus so those two would be greatly unbalanced).
When it's just about adventuring, I fear that people will go exclusive with this system. So they might leave out the lower ones, just because killing and progression through dungeons or open ground is faster with higher leveled persons. The lower ones would just be holding you back. Perhaps this creates bottlenecks in between level ranges based on what new skills/abilities classes get at certain levels.
@Trasak
I'd be interested in a graph showing the power growth relative to the current power for the three models here.
Since linear power growth include an innate reduction of every point, due to the fact the more you stack the less a linear bonus will feel rewardfull, I'm wondering if the % of increase of (stat bonus for next level)/(stat pool for current level) will show :
-For linear model, a Log curve
-For Log curve, a severly hindered log curve
-For Exponential, a linear "curve"
Solid post. If anyone remembers Asheron's Call, it had a logarithmic power curve for players. I think it was very benefiical, for exactly the reasons you described. You could be level 80 (out of 126), and do "end-game" content with other players. There were two ways that the game made player's power curve logarithmic: 1) skill points 2) skill levels
At character creation you were given 52 skill points which you could use to train and then optionally specialize in various skills. Leveling would give you additional points: Up to level 10 you would get 1 additional point per level. At 20 it becomes 1 point every 3 levels, and finally at 35 you would get a point every 5 levels. So basically, your skill point acquisition was more or less logarithmic. Furthermore, as you gained experience, you could invest that expereince into leveling the skills that you trained or spec'd. The amount of experience required increased exponentially, so that the rate you leveled up your skill was logarithmic.
Another significant contribution to the ability of players of wide level ranges to play together was the buffing system. The creature magic school allowed a mage to buff the skill levels of players and debuff monsters. So playing in a group with a dedicated creature buffer/debuffer allowed players to tackle content that would normally be out of their level range.
While I think your ideas have a lot of merit, I'm not sure they are right for Pantheon. Pantheon seems like a game where they want level to matter a lot, where it's a big accomplishment when you ding. Losing experience is supposed to be a huge penalty. With logarithic growth, the pain of xp loss is diminished. And it doesn't sound like leveling is going to take a super-long time. I wish it was going to be longer, but they're talking about months. Hitting max level in AC took years!
It is always kind of interesting to see one of your old thread resurface, I have changed how I post threads on these boards now so to see my old style is kinda funny.
@Barin999
As we were discussing on Pantheoncrafters.com log growth is a little different for crafting. It would function more like a low rank smith could try for making an item that usually requires being a master smith to succeed with any consistency but they would often fail or if they did not fail it would be much lower quality than a master could achieve. We also touched on the concept of the master could lead the group in the crafting mini game and the apprentices would have an opportunity to add moves during the turns.
In the adventuring world it is more about 1) Can I hit the mob, 2) If I do hit does it even really help, 3) can I fulfill a group role.
Healers already tend to be the most flexible when it comes to power growth as as long as the tank stays alive during a pull they have done their job. All the levels really do is increase mana efficiency, speed of being ready for the next pull, and secondary options other than spamming your biggest heal end for end.
DPS than cannot hit the mob or do 10% of the damage a character the same level as the mob can do is worthless. A tank that dies in two hits is also worthless. A crowd controller that has all of their abilities resisted is likewise worthless.
The log power curve is intended so that, as an example, a level 30 DPS can hit at least 75% of the time a level 45 character can on a level 45 mob and can do 75% of the damage per hit that a level 45 can. This would make a level 30 DPS about 60% as effective as a level 45 character when fighting a level 45 mob. It is not an efficient use of the group slot but it still functions. The other thing a level 45 character brings to the table is additional utility powers that may be desired when fighting level 45 mobs.
Conversely when fighting a level 30 mob the level 45 character is able to hit 95% of the time (anything other than a natural 1 for you d20 folks) while the level 30 character is able to hit 80% of the time (anything over a 4). The level 45 characters hits do 133% of the damage of the level 30 characters damage. The extra utility powers that the level 45 character have over the level 30 character is not very relevant as the situations those utility powers are utilized in do not exist in level 30 areas.
The level 30 players can group with level 45 players and the level 45 players can group with the lvl 30s without trivializing the content. Ideally the level 30 characters could use a lot of consumables to close the gap with the level 45 characters while they are in the level 45 areas but it would quickly become cost prohibitive to play that way all the time.
@Alexander
Thank you, I am one of those wierdo's who “see” math in their head and it is a struggle sometimes to put a concept down on paper, especially one a complex as power growth.
@MauvaisOeil
*gives MauvaisOeil a side-eye look* Did you go to school with my managers or something? I swear I have had dozens of requests after a presentation that were almost structured exactly the same way.
I'm going to cop out and say that the boards don't like my graphs and images so I cannot easily post them. Ultimately it would just be a graph with a straight diagonal line then one curved line that starts below the diagonal line then shoots up way above it then a third that rises above the diagonal line then drops below it over the levels.
In essence any time you increase in power by x% each level you are in an exponential power growth. Any time you add X value every level you are in linear growth. Any time you are adding X value divided by current level you are in a log growth.
In a lot of ways log power growth is not very rewarding in an E-peen sort of sense. There will not be power spikes as you level and you will not be tremendously more powerful than you were half the game ago and that is kind of the point. What you do gain is the ability to face more complex situations that you could not half the game ago.
Now you also need to consider power growth as a function of Naked paper doll character stats, gear, and abilities. Paper Doll stats tend to be linear growth in most games, if for no other reason than its easiest to program when making a table with stats by level. Abilities tend to be very sharp exponential growth when looking at them by level. Over the game time though both Paper Doll and Abilities become log growth as after you have hit max level they never grow until there is a level cap boost.
Gear on the other hand tends to be all over the place. In some games gear is practically just cosmetic. In other games the character is pretty much just a mech of armor the player controls and almost all the power comes from the gear. Most games are somewhere in between but Brad has said on different streams that Pantheon is intended to be a gear centric game.
Games where every expansion you replace all your raid gear with quest gear first then rare dungeon drops then finally raid drops are usually exponential gear growth games. WoW is very much one of these.
True power growth needs to be a combination of all three curves to fully model it both over level and over time played as players all reach max level. A simple math method to achieve a log power growth over level and over time for HP would be as follows. You start at 500hp at level 1 and each level until 50 you get another 10HP eventually leaving you with 990hp. Over time it is a log scale growth and over level it is a semi log growth model.
I could have also said that you gain 10*25/(your level) HP every level and you would gain most of your HP by level 25 and from level 26-50 you would get 9-5HP per level but at level 1 you would get 250 and level 2 you would get 125 and by level 10 you would only be getting 25 additional hit points. This is a true log growth function for HP and raising the level cap would not actually damage the old content as the amount of HP gained for another 10 levels would be less than you got from level 8 to level 9.
Abilities should basically have the same magnitude from the first level you get them and most of the primary abilities should be received in the initial growth stage. Later abilities are only situational versions of the primary abilities. It would be fair to have a magnitude boost if the players working together create synergies with different situational abilities but it would still be a flat boost and not a multiplier. The magnitude growth of abilities should be based on gear and or skill level which is different from character level.
AC on gear can just as easily follow the same model per armor type as can raw damage that your weapon does. Casters can get flat bonuses that make their spell magnitude grow at the same rate that weapons grow a melee characters special attacks. What high level gear can do that is significantly better than low level gear is fill multiple gear needs at the same time. Where low level items have one additional stats high level gear can end up with 4 different, non synergistic, stats that make the piece more versatile but not an order of magnitude better.
If I were Brad and Co I would decide what level I wanted the game to sunset at then build my power growth with that as the final target. That way in theory max level at launch could still do max level content (if inefficiently and with a very low success rate) at sunset without leveling again. Expansions would be about new enemies with new strengths and weaknesses that must be learned, prepared for and then defeated not about making your stats bigger and making your character an order of magnitude stronger than you were at the end of the previous expansion.
@Zoltar
I never got the chance to play Asheron's Call. Skill point games are much easier to create as log growth games for the exact reason you wrote out. Often the only difference between a naked level 1 and a naked max level character is which abilities they have on their bar.
Sadly I would agree that Log growth would be a hard pill to swallow for most Pantheon players who expect to feel EPIC as they level. For better or worse the joke is on them as all games that have a fairly static level caps are actually log growth over time. You end up raiding for weeks at max level to get that one item you really want only to keep raiding for another long period until you get your second item that also only adds 0.5% power to your character. If the leveling growth was linear or exponential then you are stuck in only the few end game zones for anything that might be a challenge. If the leveling curve was log growth on the other hand all zones that are in the plateau zone can remain a challenge even at max level with good gear.
In my opinion character death is character death. If you always loose 10% of your exp to next level every time you die it hurts the completionists heart the same. The fact that you gain only a small amount by reaching the next level is not super consequential compared to the irritation of needing to rekill 100 mobs of your level to get that 10% back. To make it worse and you are level 40 in a level 30 zone you may actually need to kill 133 mobs to get the same amount of XP back. One could also make the % you loose increase per level in the order of 1%*(your level) making it very hard to even stay at max level.