The traditional EXP system

[cybrim]

You could have basic enemies yield 1exp each, this would allow GRINDING LOL, so there is a point, but also have them drop materials that could be used to enhance their equipment or sell for cash to get better equipment, yielding absolutely no EXP would seem unfair and create the "trash mob" cycle. Take DDO, for example, Enemies don't yield EXP (unless you kill 100 in an area... or something like that, an achievement EXP) so just fighting enemies that were awesome in D&D now become trash and have no chance of being worth your time. To counter this you could have champion creatures that are more powerful and give 5EXP, these should be optional and give better things, but bosses and sub bosses should yield multiples of 100exp, this would allow players the chance to find enemies to give them important materials for the equipment to fight each boss, while making it clear that "power leveling" doesn't exist. The equipment they buy (by selling drops, don't give a slime currency... it wouldn't use it) would give them the bare minimal power they would need to fight the boss. Each boss should have exclusive weaknesses and resistances to avoid "Optimization Players", yeah that sword has a lot of attack power but I can really use that Bolt Scroll to deal a stunning hit to paralyze for 3 turns... healing items are rare so I'm going with the Bolt scroll! It is really up to you to decide on what type of game you want, but remember the SOULS series is doing really well right now and the type of game that doesn't hold your hand feels good for us 20 somethings that miss the challenge and exploration feel.

 

[PsychicToaster]

You could have basic enemies yield 1exp each, this would allow GRINDING LOL, so there is a point, but also have them drop materials that could be used to enhance their equipment or sell for cash to get better equipment, yielding absolutely no EXP would seem unfair and create the "trash mob" cycle. Take DDO, for example, Enemies don't yield EXP (unless you kill 100 in an area... or something like that, an achievement EXP) so just fighting enemies that were awesome in D&D now become trash and have no chance of being worth your time. To counter this you could have champion creatures that are more powerful and give 5EXP, these should be optional and give better things, but bosses and sub bosses should yield multiples of 100exp, this would allow players the chance to find enemies to give them important materials for the equipment to fight each boss, while making it clear that "power leveling" doesn't exist. The equipment they buy (by selling drops, don't give a slime currency... it wouldn't use it) would give them the bare minimal power they would need to fight the boss. Each boss should have exclusive weaknesses and resistances to avoid "Optimization Players", yeah that sword has a lot of attack power but I can really use that Bolt Scroll to deal a stunning hit to paralyze for 3 turns... healing items are rare so I'm going with the Bolt scroll! It is really up to you to decide on what type of game you want, but remember the SOULS series is doing really well right now and the type of game that doesn't hold your hand feels good for us 20 somethings that miss the challenge and exploration feel.

Precisely the route I feel is best for my project. While the game is nowhere near as challenging as the SOULS games, combat requires a degree of mechanical knowledge and understanding how to best strategize around certain aspects of the game. Sure, it's nice that your character is wielding dual daggers and that he/she is attacking quickly, but it might be better to prioritize the selection of debuffs at your disposal instead because the target has a very high armor rating. Maybe your melee DPS needs to switch roles to a debuffer and the frontline needs to pick up a slow, two-handed weapon that hits slower but does more damage to armored targets. 


My project doesn't have a dedicated healer class right now either. There are spells that offer temporary HP increases-best used earlier than later in battle- and a few long-cooldown restorative chants, but for the most part healing revolves around managing your inventory of items that will keep your party alive. 

 

[Dr. Cakey]

Let me answer this question another way. The RPG genre (particularly JRPGs) is traditionally based around gaining stats through fights with enemies. The 'shape' or course of the genre has been controlled by this fact. Because the genre is the right shape for the EXP system, the EXP system is the right shape for the genre. You can use other systems, but you have to build the game from the ground up to account for that. For example, instead of traditional linear leveling, enemies could give points the player can distribute to whatever stats they want, but then you'll have to tune the system so the player doesn't screw themselves by giving themselves unbalanced stats. And I just said 'unbalanced' - since the player character should have stats that are vaguely balanced (for whatever your game's definition of balanced is), why not balance those stats for them instead of making them guess?


Also, if the player is over-leveled...is that a problem? In most game genres, the player has a lot of room to improve their skill at the game. In JRPGs, though, there's generally very little skill to improve, so if the player's having difficulty there's not a lot they can do besides grind. Take away experience and they can...buy dozens of potions and phoenix downs, which also requires grinding but is even more tedious then leveling. Again, you can change the way leveling works, but it requires a lot of considerations.

 

[Wavelength]

Most of the time, if I'm overleveled in an RPG, it's because I got lost somewhere (either had a hard time finding my way through a dungeon, or couldn't figure out where to go next to trigger the mandatory plot flag), and was forced to fight a lot of battles as I worked to become un-lost.  If the amount of rewards (like EXP) I'm getting from a battle also starts declining as I'm forced to fight them over and over, it feels like insult to injury because I don't even get to (for example) unlock cool new skills as I spend hours in battle.


While diminishing returns do make game balance easier, and could be used effectively to force a greater variety of strategic diversity in a strategy game (where strategic diversity is a large part of the fun), I can't think of too many situations where diminishing returns from battles actually enhance the player's enjoyment of an RPG, on the whole.

 

[Tai_MT]

Most of the time, if I'm overleveled in an RPG, it's because I got lost somewhere (either had a hard time finding my way through a dungeon, or couldn't figure out where to go next to trigger the mandatory plot flag), and was forced to fight a lot of battles as I worked to become un-lost.  If the amount of rewards (like EXP) I'm getting from a battle also starts declining as I'm forced to fight them over and over, it feels like insult to injury because I don't even get to (for example) unlock cool new skills as I spend hours in battle.


While diminishing returns do make game balance easier, and could be used effectively to force a greater variety of strategic diversity in a strategy game (where strategic diversity is a large part of the fun), I can't think of too many situations where diminishing returns from battles actually enhance the player's enjoyment of an RPG, on the whole.

I can't think of any time that diminishing returns have made me enjoy a game MORE.  Usually, I enjoy it LESS.  You know what you do instead of diminishing returns?  RAISE THE AMOUNT OF XP TO A HIGHER AMOUNT!

Seriously, same system, except one is visibly punishing the player for grinding (and every player KNOWS they're being punished for it) while the other just makes it less fruitful to grind.


But, in all honesty, if you just want your players at a certain level at all times of the game...  Why do you even have level ups to begin with?  Or even stat gains tied to those level ups?  Just level up your player by event.  Oh, that's right, I know why devs don't do that...  It's because they still want you to fight all their monsters.  Well, we're not gonna fight all your monsters if we're getting diminishing returns on XP for doing so.  Not unless you force us to.  And, if you're forcing players to fight weak enemies for next to no reward...  your players aren't going to be having fun.

I don't understand the mentality of devs to say "I don't want my players to grind! I want to punish their choice to grind!  It breaks my game when they're overleveled!".  Look, devs, it isn't a "you vs player" relationship.  You are creating a game for players to enjoy.  If you start taking it as a "me vs them" mentality, your game is going to suck pretty hard.  Why can't we just leave XP grinding as optional?  If I want to do it, let me do it, don't punish me for it.  If you want your battles to still be tough, then introduce strategy into your battle system instead of relying SOLELY on stats and levels for balancing.  Besides, if your battles rely entirely on stats and levels...  They're going to be pretty boring anyway, so overleveled or not, they're going to be a chore for any player.  Use states!  Immunities!  Weaknesses!  Gimmicks!


Protip:  If a player runs across a battle as a random encounter with a gimmick they don't like dealing with...  They won't grind for XP on that monster.  Like, say, the enemies are immune to all damage unless you cast float on them first?  If the player has to spend each battle by casting Float on all the enemies first, before being able to damage them... they aren't really going to want to grind on those monsters.


If you want to limit players grinding in your game, just make your battles less than ideal for grinding on.  I don't mean lessen the rewards.  I mean, make them require actions to have to be taken that don't rely on stats or levels, to make the battles less about mashing attack and casting the highest level spells for instant victories and more about what you have to do in battle to even be able to beat them.  What if there are monsters that can only be damaged via poison damage?  The monsters could still be grinded, but now they're a tiny bit more hassle to do so.  That's all you have to do.  You don't have to mess with XP at all.


I wish more devs would quit thinking of their players as "the enemy".  Players aren't your enemy.  If they can break your intended progression of the game (or how you want it to play out), then you've simply failed as a dev and you need to figure out what you did wrong and how to fix it without punishing the player.

 

[Saneterre]

I'm an old player. I played the first Zelda games (Nes and Snes games in particular).


When I discovered RPGs (with Final Fantasy 6, which was called 3 at the time), I stopped playing zelda games because I saw enemies as a waste of time : fighting them was pointless, I didn't get any experience when fighting them, I only had things to lose (except from winning a few rubies).


Seeing how zelda is still a big success, I imagine that many players don't feel like me, but I really have a problem when fighting monsters seems pointless.


I have to become powerful. Nothing seems more satisfying than grinding a little and being able to dispatch in a few hits some enemies that gave you trouble at first.


It's just the way I like things to work in an RPG, but I understand that others feel differently. I loved the Suikoden series but I had a problem with how you leveled up super fast in new areas and then gained less and less experience when your level became too high. It gave me the impression of fighting many battles for nothing. The problem was even worse I think because those fights were random, so they couldn't be avoided. That's really the worse. If you don't get rewarded for fighting, you should be able to avoid those battles.

 

[PsychicToaster]

I am definitely not advocating for a game where players can't grind. My perspective is that a game with good pacing and proper balance should eliminate the need to grind. I'm encouraging players to break my game. As an example, you could go with a traditional tanky-taunty-heavy-stabby frontline to soak up damage, but there's options available that make the game more unique than that. You want to have a frontline melee that utilizes counter-attacks, parries, evasion, and sharp wit to upset enemies into foolishly attacking him? Go for it. No, seriously, there is currently a menu option to taunt enemies with insults unique to each enemy. Well, there will be, because I'm having to write all those out. 


While I want people to come up with unique ways to play the game, I feel like I've failed as a designer if a player has to resort to grinding either to make my game easier, or to catch up in levels because I haven't done my job properly and provided enough experience per act to match the difficulty curve.

 

[Saneterre]

Well, I've always liked how you could one-shot the final story boss in all disgaeas (except maybe in the last disgaea).


You grind a lot in disgaea, you're always rewarded, but aside from that, you also have a lot of sidequests with an enormous diffculty. That's the kind of game I want to make (and play).


I'm making an arena in my game. In many games that do have an arena, they don't always give you the right to participate in all competitions at first. You often have to reach some point in the story before being able to enter the strongest competitions. And I know it often frustrates me. If the enemies are too powerful, then so be it, I'll come back later, but why forbid me to try ?


Grinding is the same for me : if I want to progress the story without grinding, I should be able to do it most of the time, but if I want to spend some time to become stronger and then annihilate enemies with ease, I want to be able to do it too. Developers forcing you to remain "not too powerful" feels frustrating : If I worked for it, I should be able to reach that power.


However, there is a compromise : New game +. If you make your game in a way that you can't be overpowered, then you should really put some new game + feature where you actually have bonuses in your next adventure that allows you to finally gain that power !

 

[Tai_MT]

If the player has to grind, then your stuff is too hard and revolves too much around stats.  However, some players, like myself, enjoy going out their way to grind a little bit to make the next sections easier to deal with, or to get through the story.


Personally, I don't really set out to grind, unless I want money for gear or something, but the extra levels from that are usually fantastic to have.  What I traditionally do is simply fight EVERY SINGLE BATTLE.  I don't run from anything.  I fight it all.  Just doing that often leaves me "overleveled" for the entire game.


Most game devs don't take into account that there's a certain level of jackassing around that most players do when they play.  If you spend time exploring (like I do), you're going to just naturally have 3-8 more levels than the devs imagined you would have at that point.  This is why I emphasize making battle interesting and not skimping on battle rewards as opposed to punishing players for doing deliberate grinding (or even accidental grinding).


There is nothing less satisfying to a player to know that the dev put a specific system in place to PUNISH THE PLAYER for something they did.

 

[jonthefox]

I can't think of any time that diminishing returns have made me enjoy a game MORE.  Usually, I enjoy it LESS.  You know what you do instead of diminishing returns?  RAISE THE AMOUNT OF XP TO A HIGHER AMOUNT!

Seriously, same system, except one is visibly punishing the player for grinding (and every player KNOWS they're being punished for it) while the other just makes it less fruitful to grind.


But, in all honesty, if you just want your players at a certain level at all times of the game...  Why do you even have level ups to begin with?  Or even stat gains tied to those level ups?  Just level up your player by event.  Oh, that's right, I know why devs don't do that...  It's because they still want you to fight all their monsters.  Well, we're not gonna fight all your monsters if we're getting diminishing returns on XP for doing so.  Not unless you force us to.  And, if you're forcing players to fight weak enemies for next to no reward...  your players aren't going to be having fun.

I don't understand the mentality of devs to say "I don't want my players to grind! I want to punish their choice to grind!  It breaks my game when they're overleveled!".  Look, devs, it isn't a "you vs player" relationship.  You are creating a game for players to enjoy.  If you start taking it as a "me vs them" mentality, your game is going to suck pretty hard.  Why can't we just leave XP grinding as optional?  If I want to do it, let me do it, don't punish me for it.  If you want your battles to still be tough, then introduce strategy into your battle system instead of relying SOLELY on stats and levels for balancing.  Besides, if your battles rely entirely on stats and levels...  They're going to be pretty boring anyway, so overleveled or not, they're going to be a chore for any player.  Use states!  Immunities!  Weaknesses!  Gimmicks!


Protip:  If a player runs across a battle as a random encounter with a gimmick they don't like dealing with...  They won't grind for XP on that monster.  Like, say, the enemies are immune to all damage unless you cast float on them first?  If the player has to spend each battle by casting Float on all the enemies first, before being able to damage them... they aren't really going to want to grind on those monsters.


If you want to limit players grinding in your game, just make your battles less than ideal for grinding on.  I don't mean lessen the rewards.  I mean, make them require actions to have to be taken that don't rely on stats or levels, to make the battles less about mashing attack and casting the highest level spells for instant victories and more about what you have to do in battle to even be able to beat them.  What if there are monsters that can only be damaged via poison damage?  The monsters could still be grinded, but now they're a tiny bit more hassle to do so.  That's all you have to do.  You don't have to mess with XP at all.


I wish more devs would quit thinking of their players as "the enemy".  Players aren't your enemy.  If they can break your intended progression of the game (or how you want it to play out), then you've simply failed as a dev and you need to figure out what you did wrong and how to fix it without punishing the player.

I think it is a very real and legitimate concern that players being overleveled can "break the game" in the sense of ruining the challenge.  It's true that a well-balanced (and well-paced) game would most likely avoid this scenario unless the player specifically made the choice to grind, but as a developer I think one has to be conscious of that possibility existing in your game, even if it's a matter of "player choice."  Also, games often don't follow prescribed formulas of how things develop, and in fact this can be a very good thing--it's nice when the way a game is played varies greatly depending on things that would make each playthrough unique.  The dev might want to preserve the level of challenge throughout however, and the traditional EXP system is a big obstacle to this.  I think it's worth considering alternative ways of giving out levels, and having means other than EXP to reward players for their encounters (someone mentioned JP for example).  

 

[Tai_MT]

I think it is a very real and legitimate concern that players being overleveled can "break the game" in the sense of ruining the challenge.  It's true that a well-balanced (and well-paced) game would most likely avoid this scenario unless the player specifically made the choice to grind, but as a developer I think one has to be conscious of that possibility existing in your game, even if it's a matter of "player choice."  Also, games often don't follow prescribed formulas of how things develop, and in fact this can be a very good thing--it's nice when the way a game is played varies greatly depending on things that would make each playthrough unique.  The dev might want to preserve the level of challenge throughout however, and the traditional EXP system is a big obstacle to this.  I think it's worth considering alternative ways of giving out levels, and having means other than EXP to reward players for their encounters (someone mentioned JP for example).  

This is why I advocate for better battle systems instead of ways to punish the player.  It isn't difficult to make a game challenging if you use more than stats.  It's just time consuming to do so.  You can largely leave XP systems intact (what's fun is the XP system for D&D still works and has always worked... combat has just changed across the games and nothing else... which means they do know the point of the system as well as how to do it well).  If you want to limit level ups, just make it take more and more XP for each level (like more than would be necessary) or make enemies annoying to have to grind (like my mentioned Float scenario).


Challenge isn't found from limiting the players options.  It's found from the dev knowing what is possible in their game and coming up with actual challenges for the player to overcome despite what the player might pull.  This is why it's important to build encounters, not for specified levels or stats... but for skills and player ability.  If you balance around what the player knows and can use instead of what stats or levels they might have...  You'll find it much easier to balance for difficulty.  And grind won't matter that much, because while it might grant power, it cannot ever grant victory.

 

[stupid enough to like FF13]

Most games have limitations on how strong you can become beyond mere EXP and levels. Equipment and access to stronger skills is a major part of that. Take Final Fantasy I, for example. Your damage output increases with your stats, but only slowly. Getting a new weapon gives a far more substantial boost to your attack power, often worth several levels of Attack and Accuracy. And while you can get your spell level as high as you want provided you want to put in the time, you're not going to get Firaga before you beat Astos.


Merely because it can be difficult to balance doesn't mean that it can't be, and if a design choice is motivated primarily by "it makes things easier for me" then it may not be the best design choice for the game itself. It's entirely possible to make a game where the player can level themselves up if they need or desire the boost without completely nullifying the difficulty.

 

[jonthefox]

@Tai_MT well...I would argue that it comes from *both*.     Yes, games that want to introduce a challenge should use states, skills, and the like in interesting ways..but at the end of the day, stats are important.   The reason you need to use skillful strategy and efficient use of your skills might be because that big scary ogre has a lot more ATK and HP than you do, and you need to make sure you dodge when he uses his power strike.   Or, you use a skill that does 200% dmg at some kind of cost or trade-off...but that 200% dmg boost is going to be too amplified if your base atk stat is completely bloated.  Same thing for a skill that increases your DEF.   


Of course, the solution I personally came up with after hearing the concerns of people like Wavelength etc. was to just keep the traditional system but have each level up give less statistically significant rewards, so that being a few levels ahead or behind than I'd project isn't really a big deal.


By the way, the player being *underleveled* is just as much of a concern as the player being overleveled, in games where you want to have things be challenging.  I personally hate grinding, and while I don't necessarily want to disable the option for players who enjoy grinding, I DEFINITELY do NOT want my game to require it, because I know I as a player am completely turned off whenever a game requires grinding (this single handedly got me to stop playing Last Dream).    Which is another argument in favor of granting level ups based on the completition of quests, so that you can control the growth of players stats to match their progression in the story.  

 

[Tai_MT]

See, I just think power should make fights easier, but not be the method by which you can win them.  Those 200% attacks that are "so overpowered" due to your stats could simply be mitigated by the downside of those attacks...  Or it requires precise use of the skill in combat in order to do any damage at all.


You're just having a little bit of trouble thinking of ways to tinker with combat in your game without relying on the stats (the extra ATK and DEF mentions are where I'm getting this impression).


Let me just present to you a scenario that does exist in my game, but it isn't in the "demo" portion of it.  It's meant to teach players the value of "Stun", which leaves anyone inflicted absolutely immobile until damage is dealt to them.  I have two healing mages that have full 100% heal abilities.  They cast it, whomever it hits gets 100% of their health back.  It's a full heal.  The last creature is a powerhouse that does really powerful attacks to players.  Having a lot of stats would help you kill these enemies with ease, sure, but if you don't kill one... it gets a heal, and you're back to square one.  So, the player is only given a single character at this point that can even inflict "Stun" at all, so they have to choose what they're doing with it.  There are lots of options at this point in who and how you can win the fight.  Do you stun the healers and use your defense to kill the big guy who does a lot of damage to you, therefore, eliminating the threat?  Or, do you stun everyone except one of the healing wizards so you can focus attack them and take them out one at a time?  The stats, themselves, don't matter a whole lot here, because it isn't about how much damage you can do, it's about using what skills I've given you intelligently.  The healing wizards can't use their skill on themselves, but they can use it on anyone else.  Higher stats at that point just means less hits to kill them and maybe you can take more attacks from big burley guy.  It isn't really how you win, it just makes winning easier.  If done right, a player could even potentially keep a single monster stunned all fight while inflicting damage on it.


It's okay to have your stats matter insofar that they make combat easier.  It isn't okay to have all of combat revolve around those stats.  If your combat uses the stats as something secondary, then you don't have to worry too much about trying to balance things out.  A few levels here or there shouldn't totally matter in combat.  If they do, your combat isn't varied or interesting enough.  I mean, yeah, everyone has the power fantasy of wanting to do as much damage as humanly possible and being nigh-indestructible...  But, it's okay to temper that with making players have to think about it.  In my combat scenario, stats for that fight only mattered in-so-far that it didn't affect difficulty until stats ran somewhere above and below 20 in either direction (for reference, I use low stats, and at that stage in the game, most quests give 1 or 2 points in any particular stat upon completion... so 20 point differences is fairly large in my game).


Just think about wrenches you can throw into battle.  Ever play Final Fantasy 6?  That first boss, the snail thing?  Easily murdered, yeah, but if you attack its shell... it insta-kills whomever hit it.  And, it spends turns inside its shell every few turns, so you had to spend time defending or healing up while waiting for it to come back out.  Stats would speed this along, yes, but not allow you to win it...  Learning the attack pattern lets you win it.


Honestly, that's all stats should ever do.  Speed you along.  They shouldn't be the reason you win, they should be the reason you win FASTER.  Or, they should be the reason you don't need so many healing potions.

 

[jonthefox]

Well, it's not that I'm having trouble, it's just how I prefer to do things.  The example you gave from FF6; I don't find that particularly fun or good game design.   I don't like distributing too much power into skills or special abilities...I like them to accent and underscore the power distribution of a character's stats.   I also don't like the idea of abundant healing potions.   It's just a different approach to game design, which I think is why it may call for different paradigms when it comes to things like EXP / level rewards.  

 

[Tai_MT]

There are different approaches to game design, yes, but you do have to remember that no matter what your game design philosophy, you aren't putting things in your game to punish a player for something they may or may not do.


Final Fantasy 8 is a prime example of this.  As you level up, everything in the game levels up.  It can happen to the point of everything being so massively overpowered that you have no conceivable way of beating them.  This was obviously implemented to underscore the Junction System and punish level ups.  As a result, it is far more beneficial to skip every battle you can skip or only stay in battles until you can Draw the spells you want/need and then run.  You don't even need to do combat in the game as a result (especially with a guide that gets you to max payment and such at level 1! WHOOO!!!).  It is far more beneficial in that game to avoid combat, junction powerful skills to your stats, and blow up bosses at low levels with your super powerful junctioned stats.  It's even more powerful to never use magic at all so you can junction it.


If you punish players for doing something, they generally resent having to do it, or having to deal with it.  Especially if it's something they have little control over.  Oops, oh no, I accidently gained an extra level I wasn't meant to have here, so now all the monsters give me 1 XP!  As a player, to me, that feels like you just flipped me the bird as a dev.  Paper Mario is fairly famous for this as well, and it drove me absolutely crazy.  It gets to the point where you're leveled up enough that you just skip the next few sets of badguys because they don't award near enough of anything to be worth even fighting.  It especially makes random encounters far more tedious when you no longer want to fight them, since you're being punished each time you do.


I've always seen the whole argument of "limit the levels my players can be" as rather silly.  If you don't want them to plow through your game, but you want to make your stats important...  Simple way to do it without punishing the player.  Remove XP entirely, remove level ups entirely, make your stats dependant upon equipment you can find or buy.  That is, in essence, what you're doing anyway, by punishing players for leveling up and improving their stats.


There are lots of ways to handle XP and Level Ups.  Punishing players for doing them isn't the way to do it.


If you punish overleveling, then why even allow leveling up in the first place?  That's always been my question.  The answer that usually comes with it is "Well, I just don't want players destroying the challenge of my game and making it less fun!".  Which, I always respond with, "If a player can launch a single skill or just hit the Attack Command in your game and win without much thought...  It's already less fun.  It's just repeated mashing of one or two things to win every fight from then on out, except on bosses, where they may have to blow a healing spell or a few potions or something".  Sure, it may be simpler for a dev to balance around players who can only level up so far...  But, does that make it more fun for the player?  Maybe some find that fun.  I, in particular, do not.  I'd rather a dev having considered that maybe I took a few extra levels here or there and accounted for it, keeping the challenge fresh for me even then.


Good way to do that?  Have the game check party level just before a boss fight or something.  Event the boss out to higher levels or more skills if it's fought at higher levels.  Takes some time and effort to do it, but you can then scale even maps and such to player level that way (having a few duplicate maps with the same monsters with higher stats could work here... but it's extra work on the part of the dev to maintain the challenge without making it obvious they're punishing the player... and what player would know you have duplicate maps/monsters in place for extra levels?).

 

[jonthefox]

Who said anything about punishing players?   The EXP system is a feature of rpgs, and a classic one at that.  But depending on the game and a variety of factors, it may be appropriate to not use such a system.     Games are just a collection of rules.  The typical rule here is "every time you kill an enemy, you get EXP.  After X amount of EXP, you gain a level."   An alternative rule would be "every time you complete a dungeon, you gain a level."     The "point" of the level is the same in both cases, it's just a difference in how the level up is achieved.   Wavelength and others have said that they tend to find enemy battles annoying when they don't provide EXP reward, and that's a valid view...But some people (like myself) wouldn't mind it at all, if the game was well-designed.  By well-designed, I mean I'm not just walking into a large maze and have to fight a long series of battles that give me no rewards.  I of course would not like that.  But if the dungeon was small and battles were evented and there were only like say ~5 fights before the boss, and there were dynamic choices and possiblities, I'm perfectly okay with these battles being merely a preamble to the boss and only getting a "level up" from conquering the dungeon itself.  

 

[Wavelength]

...Wavelength and others have said that they tend to find enemy battles annoying when they don't provide EXP reward, and that's a valid view...But some people (like myself) wouldn't mind it at all, if the game was well-designed.  By well-designed, I mean I'm not just walking into a large maze and have to fight a long series of battles that give me no rewards.  I of course would not like that.  But if the dungeon was small and battles were evented and there were only like say ~5 fights before the boss, and there were dynamic choices and possiblities, I'm perfectly okay with these battles being merely a preamble to the boss and only getting a "level up" from conquering the dungeon itself.  

I think this would be a good example of good game design in general, but would still be missing out slightly on immersing the player because most players do seem crave a consistent flow of rewards for everything they do (or an unpredictable flow of rewards where it always could happen, e.g. slot machines).  I would happily play a game where I leveled up only by beating the boss of a "dungeon" that had 5 forced, evented fights - but it would still feel better if those fights gave me the EXP to feel like I was building toward the level along the way, even if it's rigged to only give me enough to level up at the end of the dungeon!


Sometimes in games it feels better to just embrace our irrational desires, rather than to try to construct ourselves into logical "gamebots" that want to play at the highest intellectual level.

 

[jonthefox]

@Wavelength hah, I mean I suppose the game could you give you the EXP messages along the way even if when you leveled up was entirely predetermined, but this would be the same kind of idea to me, just a perhaps better (or more preferred by some) implementation of it.  It's still diverging from the traditional system of EXP being highly variable depending on how much the player chooses to fight, and what types of enemies he chooses to fight.   

 

[kaukusaki]

my frame of reference has always been pen and paper rpgs, so the crpg's i write tend to reflect that. The level cap is 20 and acquisition of exp is slower, some things still award xp (like monsters),but other things can account for xp as well (quests, puzzles, etc) and as for getting stronger in terms of stats, leveling up has a few points, but it's all about getting better equipment in some fashion.


I necessarily don't mind grinding (stay on this map and slay 100 slimes to get to the next map), but i see how players today can't stand it. One doesn't have to do away with the traditional exp system, it's all about thinking up of other ways of awarding points so the player feels like they've progressed without grinding.