Ok, I was wondering everyones opinion on this matter. Should you get the same amount of experience for killing a creature at level 1 as you should at level 50, or should the experience go down, so you get less and less(possibly none) later on. In tougher games this might cause players to constantly kill weaker things(if you got the same amount) instead of going for the bigger things. On the other hand, if you got less and less it almost forces them to advance... sort of limiting. I usually like to keep things realistic, and when playing against others, I like to see players stumble over themselves when making feeble choices(however I see less and less of this in modern games). Which side are you on and why? "Practice means good, Perfect Practice means Perfect"

Ahh... the wonderful joys of game balancing...

~Vendayan

Numbers are just a way of expressing relationships. If you need to talk directly in terms of the numbers, it probably shows that you don''t fully understand the relationship.

The amount of exp you get per kill/activity is irrelevant on its own. It could be 1, 0.0001, or 1000000000. What is important is the ratio of that score to other scores, such as the amount of experience needed to level/buy skills/whatever.

Personally I like to reward tasks based on their difficulty. So as a creature becomes easier to kill (due to a rise in player level), the reward should shrink, relative to the amount of experience needed to get a level or buy a skill. This keeps people moving on and exploring new aspects of the game. But make sure that there actually is something else to do - it''s bad design to punish people for continuing the same strategy when in reality there is little else to do that is practical. (A lot of MUDs have this problem, where you stop getting experience once you kill too many of the same opponent, but there are no other opponents of comparable level for you to kill instead.)


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Well the problem with all the muds(maybe not a problem) I have played is you need a set amount of xp to go up a level... most are 1000 base with more for better races. Most of them you also get less xp for killing mobs of lower level, etc... but I don''t really have a -problem- with the xp system I am working on, I just wanted some peoples opinions. I use the "get less for same creature" type of thing, as my game demands it through the story. Also, my game includes a -training- feature that lets you train for xp, instead of fighting... I sort of just posted this to fill in the time until I get to my real question(which I haven''t thought of yet)...

"Practice means good, Perfect Practice means Perfect"

Personally if you have to say the xp you got in numbers anyway, I more like the way to reduce the xps you get from a certain monster when you grow in power than to increase the amount of experience you need to level the next time.

Most games are like 1000 for first level, 2000 for second, 3000 for third and so on or something like that.
Why not instead say you always need 1000 xp for the next level and simply reduce the points you get for the same monster?

Imagine a lvl 1 and a lvl 15 talk ooc about how much xp they got for kills. (In a RPG they shouldn''t do so, but they will...)
The lvl 15 says "I got 150000000 xp for that!"
The lvl 1: "I could level 6 times for that"

First you can''t really read those numbers any more.
"You get 34789246924 xp" or "You get 45787878054 xp"
without counting the digits, tell me quick what xp is better? Even while I typed those numbers in, I am not aware about that myself.

Also you can''t even compare if those xp you got were good or bad. On level 1 10 xp may be good, on lvl 10 those are worth nothing...

The way I would do in a CRPG is not even to tell you how much xp you got. My idea is not to have levels at all, so you don''t even need XP... You gain power by learning new skills and by practicing the already known skills so they become better.
Let''s remove all those numbers from a CRPG, at least to the player. You need numbers in a pen&paper-RPG, so you know what to roll your dice againt, but within a CRPG the computer does the dice rolling, and you only need to know if you are good or really bad with a skill.
Maybe not say: "pistols skill: 1000", but "you would hit a bulls eye from 100 meters in the dark"...

That''s RPG.

Nice... Anyhow, the levels in my game are actually == your experience(sort of). It is minorly complicated... however among these -levels- are more levels in which you gain points to attribute to your skills(its not that bad of a system in my world, although I thought about the "do x and x goes up" I have that in there too) The thing is they are both levels... Someone with say 32,000 xp will defeat someone single handedly that has 20,000 xp (even if in a normal rpg this is one level apart, in my world its ages apart...again the story explains it)

Oh yea, in my game there is a device that measures your -experience-. Well... gotta go, thinking of the differences in-between a pnp-rpg and an action-rpg(game influencing of course).

"Practice means good, Perfect Practice means Perfect"

Many newer games do both.

You get fewer (or none commonly) experience points for killing weaker critters AND it takes you more exp to go up in level.

Think about it. You kick 12 year old boys around and you''re not going to get much better at fighting, are you. Maybe learn how to kill the little kid faster, but that''s about it. It won''t help you against a 22 year old man one bit. If anything, it will hurt you because of expectations. Unless you''re a 12 year old boy, then you''re right on your level and will most definitely get better at fighting. The 22 year old will still kick your butt every time, but you''ll do a lot better against 12 year olds

I think SaGa Frontier had a hidden exp system where you''d gain exp, but the game didn''t tell you, it just told you when you went up a level in any particular attribute, which was another thing, each attribute having it''s own exp line. Whether it was a relative scale with 255 as the level-up point, or some 32 bit integer with a bunch of milestones is of course abitrary at this point. How you plan on working this system is of course very relevant. In a crpg, it would probably just work fine, as long as you gave the player some hint that he was still gaining exp, or if he should consider moving on. However, in a p&prpg, players are very worried about the numbers, since, thats all there is to the game, so I''d advise against this hidden exp thing, unless you have an idea on how it should be done right and are willing to take a risk.

In the meantime, if you want to go relative, just have some number that you want as how many same level battles you want the player to perform to gain a level, and then say the Max/That number (I''ll go 256/16==16) and then have some method of changing that exp number based on the enemy''s levels. ExpGain * MyLevel / HisLevel. In this case, it would be very beneficial to keep this rational number bigger than 1.

-> Will Bubel
-> Machine wash cold, tumble dry.

Inmate said:*How you plan on working this system is of course very relevant. In a crpg, it would probably just work fine, as long as you gave the player some hint that he was still gaining exp, or if he should consider moving on. However, in a p&prpg, players are very worried about the numbers, since, thats all there is to the game, so I''d advise against this hidden exp thing, unless you have an idea on how it should be done right and are willing to take a risk.*

Crpg? what is the C?... anyhow they will always know they are gaining. I will make sure of that. In a pnp-rpg most people -are- worried about their numbers, but there are some where the players don''t get to see their numbers(not many I think), however, I can keep their numbers hidden(just certain ones, others will just slow the game down). Even if players don''t know the numbers, they will still do the same thing(at least I will). If I am working on a warrior, I know I want the strongest armor and sword, I can test out stuff, that just takes a little time, and I know my strength is the stat that is the most important to me(not me, just in general, I prefer dex). With-holding the numbers will just make me more interested in what I am doing, and make me think more about it.

Seems like I am getting more specific answers then I thought I would be... like I said before, I had already decided on everything experience wise that could actually be helped on from normal gamedev.net people. The rest I have to do alone, but there are other things(I imagine) that could be worked on, and that is what I am thinking of now. Btw, there is no level limit(there is, but not really) in my game.

Basically my experience is dependant on how many hits you take, how many you dish out, and 2 set numbers. And of course this is all cheat proof(...as cheat proof as life is).

"Practice means good, Perfect Practice means Perfect"

OmniBrain said:
Most games are like 1000 for first level, 2000 for second, 3000 for third and so on or something like that.
Why not instead say you always need 1000 xp for the next level and simply reduce the points you get for the same monster?


The question I am asking is, why do you think most games uses gradually increasing numbers to the next level?

When you decide that the player always need to get 1000 experience points to get to next level, that means, if the player gains experience from killing monsters, that monsters must give less xp all the time. Doing it like this have many benefits, but requires a LOT more consideration than the normal way.

Usually, when the next level requires more experience than the previous one, the player will merely fight monsters giving higher number of experience. And this gives the player a feeling of progression. It is a reward in itself to see the numbers actually grow in size.

The psychology of the player will work differently as soon as you start to decrease the rewards from each kill. Sure, you may state as much as you want that the two system gives the same level-up speed. But instead of seeing growing numbers and an consistant increase in everything, the player will merely find that what he kills give less benefits. The exponential system tells the player that he needs to get more xp to the next level. The fixed system tells the player that he now receive less xp per kill. There is a subtle difference, but it will touch the player deep down inside.

If you want that system to work, you must be very carefull to always have the "next" monster, the one that will give proper xp, ready to be killed as soon as the player levels up. It may not feel so bad for a player to continue killing something that gives him 150 xp for a little while, if next level only requires a somewhat larger number of xp. But killing something that suddenly obviously decreased the rewards it is giving, will be more noticable.

Also, you said that if a level 15 gets 1329423845 xp points for one kill, and the level 1 says that he could level tons of times for that amount. Then you suggest that with the fixed xp system that problem would be solved. But how can you say that it is any more solved than it is with exponential xp systems? If a level 1 kills a creature that gave a level 15 100 xp, then the level 1 should get more xp from the same kill, in this case TONS more. If this is a problem or not, I don''t really care, but at least it neither comes nor goes away with a change in systems.