[MUD-Dev] Removing the almighty experience point...

[Vincent Archer]

I was having a discussion about the problems of most MMORPGs, past
and announced (until cancelled, that is), and it came to the
levelling process.

You have some games that attempt to push aside the concept of levels
and replace it by skills, but you still use XP to raise the skills.
Even the old Ultima Online can be thought has having XP, it's just
random whether or not you earn some. All these lead to the same
syndrome, the "grind", where a player slaughters repeatedly a number
of mobs in game, until he gains the appropriate level/skill. And the
grind leads to the "XP highway" concept, where players congregate
around the areas where the difficulty/experience ratio is the
lowest.

Well, if you have games with XP but no classes/levels, why not have
a game with classes/levels and no XP?

Ultimately, levels are used in a game to measure one thing:

  - Your readiness to accede to a new segment of content

Which is good. The problem is defining how you are "ready" for that
new content. That's where opinions diverge. Players want the
readiness to measure your capacity to confront the challenges of
said content.  Alas, the game measures your readiness chiefly by the
amount of time spent killing mobs/doing quest, not by any form of
prowess.

This is due to a simple problem: XP, as a numerical indicator, is a
form of cash. It's untraceable, and it's exchangeable at will. One
experience point I got from killing The Grand Boss of the Dungeon is
completely equal to one experience point I got from killing
a_weak_mob93. I might have gotten oodles of XP from the Grand Boss,
but these are equal to the oodles of XP I got from killing hordes of
those weak mobs. The only difference between those is the time
spent, which has zero influence on the end result: I have earned X
amount of XP, I can get to the next level.

That led me to suggest a different model of levelling. It's called
the "achievement model", because it caters essentially to achievers,
of course, like most level-based systems.

You can access level N+1 when, and only when, you have at least N
achievements of level N or above.

Achievements are used to measure your prowess, game knowledge,
mastery of your class, interaction with other players, whatever.
Each achievement is individual and unique. A repeat of the exact
same circumstances means nothing.

For example, killing one mob of level N is a level N achievement
(however, killing another is not, of course). Visiting a point of
interest in game that is guarded by hostile level X mobs is an
achievement of level X. Keeping under control 3 mobs while a 4th is
fought by your group is a level Z achievement. Defeating the boss of
Dungeon Y is another achievement. Using "correctly" a skill you can
gain at level W is itself an achievement of level W. And so on.

The idea is that, if your character is level 20, then by definition,
you (the player) have a good knowledge of the game world and/or a
good equipment and/or a knowledge of your class abilities and/or
experience (in the real world sense) of playing in a group in some
challenging situations.

How you progress is up to you. At level 4, you can grab 4 moderately
easy level 4 achievements, which raises you to level 5, where you
start anew, or you can attempt to get a slightly harder level 7
achievement (visit an orc-held tower), which not only helps you
finishing level 4, but 5, 6 and 7 as well.

That kind of achievement-based system behaves very differently from
an XP-based levelling system. It rewards real world knowledge and
skill, notably. An experienced player can roll a new character, and
very quickly "level", by simply running to various places he already
knows, and reproducing feats he's already seen by other players he
grouped with.

The largest problem with that system is, of course, coming up with
achievements. As the level increase, the amount of achievements
required to level does, which requires the game designers to come up
with suitable measures of additional prowess in game. This is a lot
harder than merely doing a copy of existing monsters, raising their
level by 10, wrapping a new skin over them, and putting them in a
new area, and calling it a new expansion "with 10 brand new
levels". If you plan a level 40 cap, you have to come with at least
780 different achievments, just to have at least enough to finish
each level in turn, and the amount you need to design grows with the
square of the level cap.

Some players will also find themselves locked out of higher levels.
Unless they manage to master enough aspects of the game, it is
physically impossible for them, no matter how long they can play per
week, to access the higher end of the game (the elite syndrome: only
"skilled" players can be of high level), which might discourage
players.

However, no player can ever accuse your game to encourage grind
(repeating mindlessly the easiest task you can find for your level)
or call it a treadmill, if the requirements for real skills keep
changing as you level.

  (oh, and if you want to keep grind, make the game item-oriented,
  and have the players hunt mobs to get equipment/crafting
  materials)

--
	Vincent Archer			Email:	archer at frmug.org

All men are mortal.  Socrates was mortal.  Therefore, all men are Socrates.
							(Woody Allen)
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