I would suggest each swing of the sword gives experience(whether it misses or not) and to fix the whole 'Healers wouldn't level up' thing Hand_of_Destruction mentioned, make every spell cast give twice or three times the experience of a weapon attack.(Because a warrior could hit a number of times while a mage/monk is in the proccess of casting)

You could even give two or three kinds of experience; Normal(which is gained from attacking/casting and increases the damage for them), Defensive(which is gained by taking damage, and increases your natural defense), and skill(which is gained from using skills, and betters the skill it is gained from).

That system would work, though I'd do things a bit differently. After all, more damage can be done with higher levels, so why have to make a ridiculously large number of experience points at high levels? Why not just equate to the player level and enemy level, such as (enemy level/player level) * damage? Then just go with a flat amount of exp that applies to all levels. That way you won't get any exp for sluaghtering level 1 monsters at level 50, and you'll save those for the n00bs. Just my opinion though.

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Original post by Hand_Of_Destruction Hmmm take into consideration that only tanks and mages /I take it that you make a fantasy MMORPG but it doesn't matter much/ will get experience while support guys like healers won't get exp this way.

Support roles like healers can gain experience from the amount of health they ACTUALLY healed. For example, you're healing a target for 10 when it have 4/5 hp, and so you only gain 1 exp and not 10. To further stop people abusing this system, you can make healers only gain a percentage of exp of target they healed.

Support spells or blesses can be given a fixed amount exp every time it is cast on a target. But it does not give exp when the target already have the spell cast on them to prevent abuses. To further stop people abusing this, you can try allowing the spell only to be cast on party members.

Another problem with gaining experience in direct proportion to damage done is that often the most difficult enemies to face wont be the ones with the most health.

Stereotypically, mages do a lot of damage, but have low health. It might take the player ages to kill a mage, because he keeps: turning you into a frog/making your character move or attack slower/ making you do less damage/ doing lots of damage to you so you have to spend more time or potions healing.

Or what if the enemy has armour, so that although he has less health, each of your blows does less damage? It would take the same amount of time to kill this enemy, but the player would get half the experience.

And that's just two examples. There will be hundreds of possible enemies where "damage taken to kill it" doesn't match up with the difficulty or time invested to kill it.

With a damage based experience system, there would be no reason for players to invest time into killing low health enemies.
By choosing the method for gaining experience, you will have reduced the variety of enemies you can offer the player, and the variety and interest in your game.

then, take a different approach.

If the experience is not gotten from the number of damage, imagine the experience is gotten from... the moves?

One attack means one experience point, if it is successful, and two or three if it is not. It is a well known fact that you learn more from your errors than from your successes.

You might then consider removing the HP level difference, by putting the levels on the skills. let's say that the first level of skill gives you an additional 10% more chances to hit, and 10% more damage. the second level might give you 9% more, and then 8, 7, 6 and so on and so forth... The ultimate level of skill would only give you a total of 75% chance of hitting, considering an oppponent with basic fighting skill. every level of fighting skill of defenser removes an equal number of percentage from attack rate from attacker, which means that, basically, a fight would include approximately nineteen misses for one effective touch, reflecting what happens in most of real fights...

But to make it fair, the attack rate should be made higher than in most MMOs.

And to make the learning rate interesting, you should DOUBLE, yes, that's what I just wrote, double, the number of points necessary for a level at each level change. If you need 2000 experience points to get from level 0 to level 1, then you need 4000 more exp points to reach level 2, then 8000 more to reach level 3, 16k more for level 4, 32k more for level 5, and so on and so forth...

This VERY steep learning curve means that no one is out of range of anyone. You always have a chance to kill anyone and anything in the game, albeit this chance is extremely remote, at best... But everyone deserves a chance to shoot in the dark.

But that's only my opinion here...

Hmmm, yeah that would be a problem.

So, experience could be gained by:

(enemylvl * 10 - playerlvl)per hit for warriors, with a different system for each class.

so a lvl 1 enemy would give 9 exp per hit to a lvl 1 player, 8 to a lvl 2 player, 0 to a lvl 10+ player. (You'd create a blocker so as not to negative experience)

(spell-lvl * 3 - playerlvl) for mages.

Actually, the above one wouldn't work do to someone just sitting down and casting high end shield spells over and over until he reaches the max player lvl. It would take some work figuring out how to make different classes level evenly.

Personaly, I like it when your different stats level up idependently of each other; but that's just my preference.

For an interesting levelling system, look at "Kengo: Master of Bushido", an old PS2 game. You do training exercises, like meditation and sword practice, to build up your "theoretical" skill, and then, through actual combat, that is gradually realized into your actual capabilities. Once you reach your potential, you can't improve without more training, so you can set your balance of skills with your training regimen, and then they grow into that balance with use.

That way, you get the "Use it to build it" in the training, and the pure "XP per fight" system can be used to ensure that all classes level on an even curve.

I like this, how about a level 1 player kills a rat for 8 EXP. A level 20 player kills a rat for 8 EXP, but he is at a higher level, so it doesn't help him any. I don't know why, but the feeling that EXP value goes down so that you fight monsters your level bothers me.

[Edited by - ozzoright on April 20, 2006 5:08:08 PM]

The best experience system, in my estimation, is one that A.)rewards each action rather than each monster killed, and B.)uses skill levels with no single XP level.

I remember how STUPIDLY hard it was to be a support class by yourself in EQ, because you weren't designed to kill things. This encouraged grouping, of course, but how many hours have you wasted in your lifetime waiting for someone to play with?

I would also mention C.)levels should become much harder to gain later on. The Elder Scrolls infuriate me in this regard. It takes forever to level up 1-10, but after about 15, nobody can touch you and the levels are just piling up. It should take you a short amount of time to learn the basics, but require MORE effort as you move up in the world.

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Original post by templewulf I remember how STUPIDLY hard it was to be a support class by yourself in EQ, because you weren't designed to kill things.

Yah I got EQ, played it for about a week, cancelled my account then tossed it. It SUCKED. The classes were lame and virtually the same and there was no one around, not to mention how boring and repetitive combat was.

How do you create a combat system that doesn't get repetitive? Are there any good examples? Maybe you could change the way combat works everytime you get in a conflict?

[Edited by - ozzoright on April 20, 2006 7:18:46 PM]