Original post by themime if you look at the up coming Dungeon and Dragon Online (DDO), its an MMO, but you don't gain ANY experience for killing monsters; its ALL quest based. This allows for that sneaky rogue to stealth past most of it, or that bard to lull have of them too sleep and run.
Now if they make the quests sufficiently complex and numerous (and I don't see how they couldn't, since this would be the meat of the game) THIS would be an MMO I'd actually play. It's perfect because it potentially makes monsters secondary sources of income and equipment, which other non-combat players would be capable of getting elsewhere (a thief raiding a chest, or mage penetrating a magical barrier).
If monsters simply carry different items than can be found elsewhere, it would also encourage team gameplay.
No experience for killing monsters? Thats even worse than FF9 when you didn't get any experience for beating bosses. You only get very little AP (more than regular monsters, but still very little.)
If you only get experience for finishing quests, then you better give a lot of quests or a lot of experience for each quest.
Hmm... I guess I'd give some exp from killing monsters, but not too much. One way to balance this is to also give exp for picking locks, sneaking past enemies, successfull spellcasting etc. etc. Now you should balance this, so people don't end up JUST killing monsters. How about a fair amount exp for tricking/killing/casting a spell on an enemy the first time you encounter that type/race, and less the other time around and even less after that.. This will reflect how things work in real life and it will make people not just hang around and kill the same monsters (to level up before encountering other monsters). People learn more the first times they encounter a problem and less thereafter. Perhaps a critical success at something also gives extra exp - reflecting how one can suddenly find a whole new way to solve a problem.
When it comes to experience and leveling up - how about having different "types" of experience? killing monsters doesn't make you more charismatic, so being able to level up charisma after a big bad battle doesn't really seem right.
When it comes to basic elements of an RPG I would say that a very important part is NPC interaction. Skills related to this should also be important to not just make another hack'n'slash (unless that is what you want - those are cool too ;). Alignment, intelligence, wisdom and charisma are some of the stats that might control this. How about adding a social engineering skill? Giving a player the ability to manipulate other people as a skill. This could for instance give you a few extra sentences to select from (colored differently to distinguish them). These alternatives don't necessarily succeed. They have a chance of success related to your social engineering skill and intelligence for instance.
Some different skills related to NPC's -Sense alignment -Social engineering -Charm -Intimidate -Read thoughts -Barter
I'll put up some more later :)
my-eulogy - A blog about coding and gfxsdgi - Semi-Daily Game IdeaChunkyHacker - Viewer for Relic chunky formats (used in DOW)
Original post by e-u-l-o-g-y Hmm... I guess I'd give some exp from killing monsters, but not too much. One way to balance this is to also give exp for picking locks, sneaking past enemies, successfull spellcasting etc. etc. Now you should balance this, so people don't end up JUST killing monsters. How about a fair amount exp for tricking/killing/casting a spell on an enemy the first time you encounter that type/race, and less the other time around and even less after that.. This will reflect how things work in real life and it will make people not just hang around and kill the same monsters (to level up before encountering other monsters). People learn more the first times they encounter a problem and less thereafter. Perhaps a critical success at something also gives extra exp - reflecting how one can suddenly find a whole new way to solve a problem.
When it comes to experience and leveling up - how about having different "types" of experience? killing monsters doesn't make you more charismatic, so being able to level up charisma after a big bad battle doesn't really seem right.
Interesting point. Maybe battling should give weapon-use experience and strategy/tactical experience.. lock picking could give pilfering experience and avoiding enemies in a stealthy manner could give Stealth experience. Even something like Party experience could be earned while teaming up with a certain amount of people, giving you the ability to learn certain party-related skills.. and similarly with Solo experience. While this would make a large impact on gameplay in that you would want to do more than fight the same monster over and over to improve your character, the battle system remains the same when viewed at the highest level, in that characters would inevitably be modeled after the best of what deals enough damage to defeat their enemies before their enemies defeat them.
That's where the "mental abilities" come into play. With manipulation you could actually manipulate others to do the fighting for you. With barter/trade you can get better items without having to battle larger enemies. People with much social skills might become leaders which again means they don't actually have to be strong because they don't necessarily have to fight at all.
my-eulogy - A blog about coding and gfxsdgi - Semi-Daily Game IdeaChunkyHacker - Viewer for Relic chunky formats (used in DOW)
About DND... since third edition they have encouraged people to give experience for "overcoming a challenge". If a rogue were to sneak by a guard that was trying to stop people from entering a building, he earns half of the experience he would get from killing him. I think they are only giving you experience for quests because they don't want people to kill goblins all day... they want them to explore dungeons and clear out camps.
"Practice makes good, Perfect Practice makes Perfect"
Original post by KingRuss I think they are only giving you experience for quests because they don't want people to kill goblins all day... they want them to explore dungeons and clear out camps.
Yeah, but don't you think that that should be my decision?
