The missing direct reward seems to be an issue, maybe a hybrid could help. Every action will be rewarded with "base" experiences whereas a final bonus will be calculated at the end of day or end of level.

My current game project is not a MMORPG but a more or less "game level" based RPG. After finishing a game level a character gains experience according to his action. There are more actions and goals than just killing available, so a more diverse experience calculation is possibile. But I got the same problem, the players starts with level 1 and will gain quite fast experiences. If he has to finish the game level first before advancing he will play through the first map and can advance up to lets say 5 character level at once. This is not the desired effect.

Well, I think to give the player a direct "base" experience reward and a final game level based experience "bonus" depending on number of death, killed mobs,
number of reached quest goals etc.

It is not my intention to "delay" the experience gain, but to introduce a none linear experience calculation. Two simple examples:

1.
Killed 20 orcs: 150 exp
Killed 3 spiders: 40 exp
Died 3 times: -45 exp
Quest A solved: 200 exp
Quest B solved: 200 exp
==> 545

2.
Killed 10 orcs: 100 exp
Killed 1 spider: 15 exp
Died 0 times => "Last man standing bonus" + 250exp
Quest A solved: 200exp
==> 565

Different play styles should be rewarded, not only the (WOW like) grinding way (each mob will gain the same exp, dieing will not be punished/rewarded).

--
Ashaman

It's a good idea Ashaman

But like the WoW BG example...and as people are starting to see.... you're sort of suggesting an Additional BONUS to exp at the end of the day based on the things you do. Hence you might wake up the next day, log on and be surprised at the bonus you receive.

A vast majority of people will want some way of tracking their advancement in real time...IE and EXP Bar or something...which is the Grind we all know and love. I think your Idea, and what it sounds like to me..... is to include several different types of EXP.

You kill a mob you get 150 exp towards leveling (this you can see in real time)

Having killed that same mob, you loot an item you need to complete a quest.

You hand in the item you gain 300 exp towards leveling (again, you see that gain in real time)

However....based on the difficulty of the quest, you gain some "Quest Exp" which you Don't see and is calculated in the background. Gaining Quest Exp will allow for NEW quests to become available to your character. (something along those lines) The player has no idea how much quest exp he or she has, or how much they get per quest etc etc.... they just know that they may log into the game some day and see that an NPC that didn't have a quest for them yesterday....now does....and they will always wonder if it had something to do with that mysterious "Quest Exp"

This sort of thing could be applied to all sorts of things....

Crafting... - you could gain "Crafting exp" in the background which would be based on the items made, their difficulty, rarity, quality etc.... allowing for new crafting quests or recipes to become available.

Sure, someone could sit and Craft rusty daggers all day and hope to "Grind" some crafting exp but because it's in the background, they'll never know. Plus you could code it to deter such actions.

an example might be....

Blacksmithing
you're a lvl 1 blacksmith, you just trained to learn blacksmithing.
you can make a rusty dagger.
you craft a rusty dagger (you gain 2 crafting exp in the background)
you make 10 rusty daggers (failing a few times along the way)(having made 10, you have earned 20 crafting exp....you could also perhaps subtract crafting exp when someone fails....tying some Player Stat to crafting which would decrease the chances of failing etc...)
Now that you made your 10th rusty dagger, you can no longer skill up Blacksmithing from them...as you also reached level 10 in Blacksmithing(something the player can see)and will no longer gain Crafting Exp because you can't skill up making it. IE you will only gain hidden crafting exp on items that grant a skill up in the given skill.

These are just random thoughts and they certainly are not set in stone..... just some ideas

- John

I like where you're going with that projectkmo. I think instead of it directly effecting your leveling without you being aware, it should effect something else without you being aware. Maybe the more you craft, the more a stat builds up secretly that helps increase your chances of successful craft attempts.

This way you're effecting the percentage the player will succeed/fail at crafting without having them be directly aware of it.

Though this sort of stat is kind of a double-edged blade because while it's neat to implement, if it's not noticed by players then what is the point in even adding it? Unless it helps to balance out your game in some way.

But I've always liked the idea of having the player's actions benefit/harm them in some way without them directly knowing. Makes things more interesting and unique to each player. One player might be god of crafting because he loves doing it and has done it a lot, and he never fails to craft an item. Yet they don't directly know why it is that they succeed more than other people who don't craft as frequently.

I guess eventually the players would catch on and pick up on the mechanics behind the system, but it would be nice to add those sorts of things into a game anyway.

That's how it is in a lot of table-top RPGs. You gain experience at the end of the game session, not after each kill.
That's not the case of D&D, of course.

The hybrid system sounds a bit better. It has the benefits of the instant reward with the benefits of the nonlinear daily bonus. I could see myself enjoying a system like that.

As for the secret stats. I'm pretty sure everyone who plays mmo's realizes the reason they succeed more as they do something is because they have some higher stat than the other players. Not letting them see the stat isn't going to make players forget its there. If I spend all day crafting and have a 100% success rate I'm not going to be suprised when some new player comes up and starts failing 50% of the time.

Quote:

I guess eventually the players would catch on and pick up on the mechanics behind the system, but it would be nice to add those sorts of things into a game anyway.

Having mechanics the players can understand isn't terrible to gaming. I prefer when I can understand the mechanics because it allows me to know why I failed, not simply wonder what the hell was going on behind the scene's that made me fail.

Here is a variation:

What if we abandon the concept of levelling as gaining more total power, but instead think of levelling as the character being able to be better in their chosen field?

What I mean is that instead of levelling just giving a bonus to a stat, skill, etc, it instead give the player a greater ability to modify their character.

Example:
A Level 1 player can change their character's stats/skill/etc by up to a maximum of (for the sake of the example) +/-10 points with starting stats at 1000 points. At level 10 a player can change their character's stats/skill/etc by up to a maximum of +/-100 points.

To stop players just constantly changing their characters and to reward long term play, players can only change a maximum of (for the sake of the example) 100% of their maximum stat/skill/etc modifier per day. So a level 1 character can only modify 1 point per day and the level 10 player can modify up to 10 points per day.

Onus, a First level character has these stats/skills:
Strength: 1000
Reflex: 1000
Body: 1000
Mind: 1000

Swords: 1000
Magic: 1000
Healing: 1000
Sneaking: 1000

Onus is going to be a magic user that also can sneak around, so the player knows that Onus will need a high Reflex Skill, a high Min, a High Magic and a high Sneak.

After the first day the player can now change 10 points, so he lowers the Strength by 5 and raises Magic by 5 giving Onus, at the ends of day 1


Strength: 995
Reflex: 1000
Body: 1000
Mind: 1000

Swords: 1000
Magic: 1005
Healing: 1000
Sneaking: 1000

Each day the player can change 10 points on Onus.

After day 8 this would mean 80 points can be change so that Onus would look like:
Strength: 990
Reflex: 1010
Body: 990
Mind: 1010

Swords: 990
Magic: 1010
Healing: 990
Sneaking: 1010

If Onus levelled up in that time, then it would allow a greater maximum/minimum for each Stat/skill.

What this means is that a character, over time will get better at the aspects that they want, but at the cost of aspects they don't want. You would reward players who put a lot of points into a particular stat/skill, but this would be at the cost of flexibility.

So a high level character and a low level character have the same total stats/skills, but the higher level character is far better at their chosen "profession" than a low level character.

It also means that even a new character could be useful in virtually any quest, but specialists would be useful too. No character, whether low level or not, would find some use in the game.

It also means that over time, a character can respec their character as needed and even change them to take advantage of certain equipment if it requires certain stat/skill score to use, or the needs of the community change (like if too many players are going into healing, then there would be more reason to respec to some other skill set.