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

[neild-mud at misago.org]

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Original message: http://www.kanga.nu/archives/MUD-Dev-L/2004Q3/msg00850.php

On Mon, 20 Sep 2004 11:25:41 -0700
Sean Middleditch <elanthis at awesomeplay.com> wrote:

>> The problem with this, as Vincent said, is that experience points
>> are fungible.  There's no difference between xp earned for
>> whacking rats, saving the princess, or killing the troll king--it
>> all goes in the same pot.  It's this form of fungible achievement
>> that is the problem.

> Domain XP solves the problem nicely while keeping the simplicity
> of an XP based system.  Each task has a certain domain attached to
> it, and different skills/classes also have domains attached.
> Killing things with a sword gives you Warrior XP.  Casting spells
> gives you Caster XP.  Picking locks and disarming traps gives you
> Rogue XP.  If all you do is go around bashing monsters, all you
> can get better at are the skills related to bashing monsters.

This merely subdivides the problem.  If casting spells gives you
caster xp, you just end up with hordes of players casting spells at
air.

At one point when I was playing Morrowind, I wanted to increase my
lockpicking ability.  I sat in front of a door for a while,
repeatedly casting a spell at it to lock it, and then picking the
lock.


> Assuming that bugs get fixed and such a bug wouldn't last long,
> I'll assume you mean some more of a design problem.  Simply, if
> you're going to give XP for killing monsters, the XP given should
> be based on the difficulty of the fight.

That sounds wonderful in theory.  In practice, it's an ideal that no
game ever reaches.

It also has issues in that high-danger, high-xp fights are generally
viewed as poor risk/reward to players.

> Using just some pre-written "level" field for the monster is not
> going to work.  A monster might be a very difficult fight for a
> level 10 wizard but a very easy fight for a level 10 warrior.  The
> difficult should instead be determined by either a) the individual
> attributes, or b) measurements taken during the actual battle.

> In the first case, you'd just compare things like defense, attack,
> health, magic abilities, magic resistance, equipment, etc.  If the
> player has weak attack, weak defense, and high magic (a wizard),
> and the monster has high attack, weak defense, and strong
> resistance (a golem or something else made for killing wizards),
> the system will see that the wizard is at a severe disadvantage.

What the game doesn't realize is that golems rely on high-damage,
close-range attacks--and a pair of smart wizards can "juggle" a
golem between them, switching the monster's aggro to the other
player whenever it approaches one.  While the golem does resist

half their attack spells, they can skill kill it over the course of
about five minutes--and the bonus xp handed out for the "difficult"
fight makes it all worth while.

The game designer notices this and changes the aggro patterns on
golems to make them stickier.

Now, a high-level players take to hanging out in zones populated
with low-level golems.  They acquire the aggro of every golem in
sight and sit, unharmed, while the poor creatures try to do damage
to them.  Low-level guildmates rack up the xp by pounding away on
the golems.

The game designer changes the game to hand out no xp for defeating a
monster that was aggroed on someone other than the attacker.

Intentionally stealing aggro away from someone else's target becomes
a popular form of griefing...

MOGs are complex systems, with many interacting components.  Balance
is *hard*.  There are games that have been out for years that still
have balance flaws--in fact, the longer a game continues, the more
content is added, and the more likely it is that there will be
balance issues.

The problem with fungible xp advancement is that it demands that
every single section of the game be balanced.  A single rare
combination of class, equipment, abilities, tactics, and enemy that
results in unintentionally high xp/hour can unbalance the entire
advancement treadmill.  Guarding against such situations is
effectively impossible.

> In the second case, you'd just measure what happens.  How many
> resources did the wizard lose?  (prepared spells, mana points,
> health points, item uses/charges, etc.)  How many resources did
> the monster lose?  How many successful attacks did each make?  How
> damaging on average was each participant's attacks?  If the wizard
> used up a crap load of healing potions, almost none of his spells
> worked, and his physical attacks rarely hit and even more rarely
> did noteworthy damage, and the golem just sat there and beat the
> piss out of the wizard, you can bet the fight was a hard one.
> This system isn't easy to cheat at, either.  In a system based
> only on _some_ combat measures (like damage dealt, damage
> received) you can easily farm monsters.  Get them to beat on you
> while a healer keeps you up, for example.  In this system, that
> won't do much - you aren't losing any resources.  Sure, you keep
> losing health, but you also keep gaining it during the battle "for
> free."  The healer isn't getting anywhere either, since they're
> casting a spell that's very easy and familiar to them; there is no
> difficulty or danger in the casting, just some resource loss, and
> even then not a whole lot (in most games; in games where magic is
> harder to use or rarer, you're no likely to have a healer able to
> just sit there and heal you repeatedly anyhow).  The system knows
> precisely how hard the battle was, how hard the task was, because
> it isn't guessing, it's measuring.

Players will enthusiastically game an approach such as you describe
here.  Fights where I finish with just 10% health remaining give out
more xp?  Time for me to make certain that I don't finish the fight
until I've taken enough damage.  Using healing potions increases xp
gain?  Healing potions are now potions-of-xp--and there will be
spreadsheets detailing the exact cost/benefit of earning money to
spend on potions to use for xp.

This also opens entire new worlds of potential player frustration.
The active, aware healer who ensures that every member of the party
is at full health all the time is suddenly unwelcome--because he's
reducing the bonus "in danger" xp awards.  The player who uses good
tactics to obliterate a tough monster with carefully planned attacks
receives a smaller award than the random button-masher who wastes
have his energy on useless spells.

This last point is one of the dangers of "perfect" balance,
incidentally--there's a fine line between an exploit and good
tactics.  Aggressively closing down unintended approaches to
overcoming game obstacles can (will) make the overall game less
interesting.

>> Experience point systems are fragile.

> Any system relying solely on numerics and raw computational logic
> is fragile when dealing with something as natural as learning and
> improvement.  Even if you had a GM dedicated to each player to
> watch them and assign improvements, you'd still end up with
> mistakes being made, the GM misjudging difficulty, etc.

This isn't true at all.

I'm contrasting systems with fungible advancement with ones with
modes of advancement may not be exchanged.

Consider a small game which contains ten distinct tasks.  Each task
has a difficulty from 1 - 5, with an ideal difficulty (not too easy,
not too hard) of 3.

Eight of the tasks are well-balanced with a difficulty of 3.  One is
too easy, and has a difficulty of 1.  One is too hard, and has a
difficulty of 5.

Consider a small game with fungible advancement: There are ten
tasks.  Every time you complete a task, you get one point.  You need
five points to win.  Under this system, a player can perform the
easiest task five times in a row to win; the average difficulty of
the tasks required to win is 1.  The game is too easy.

Consider the same game, but with non-exchangeable advancement.
Every time you complete a task for the first time, you get one
point.  You need five points to win.  The average difficulty of the
tasks required to win is 2.6.  The game is slightly too easy, thanks
to the one unbalanced task, but still very close to the ideal of 3.

Systems where advancement is composed of many unrelated components
are far more robust than ones where all forms of advancement may be
swapped for one another, because balance failures in a single
component are isolated.

> The Real World(tm) functions fine with currency.  The problem with
> game economics tends to be a lack of realism in the economics.
> For example, there is an infinite number of coins in the game.  As
> time passes, more coins come into being.  In the real world, there
> is a fixed amount of coinage.  Even when the government mints new
> coins or prints more bills, it's usually at a rate fairly near the
> estimated loss/destruction of existing currency.

The real world functions with currency because, as you say, it looks
absolutely nothing like game economies.  In particular, money in the
real world has no value other than what people ascribe to it.  There
is no guarantee that you can take a dollar bill to the local fast
food restaurant and exchange it for a hamburger.

> In a game, the solution is to provide a fixed amount of coinage
> and goods.  For example, say you have some monsters (orcs) that
> normally have coins and equipment.  Well, simply, give the orcs a
> pool of coins and equipment.  When spawing an orc, remove the
> coins and eqp from the pool.  To replenish the pool, the orcs will
> have to actually get more coin and eqp.  This can be done by
> having the orcs raid NPC merchants, loot PCs (that can make for a
> *LOT* of fun RP, I might note - having to go to the orc caves to
> seek out the orc that took your sword, Bone Grinder.)

This is the kind of thing that sounds great until you try to
implement it.  Can you give any examples of functioning games using
this form of economic model?

> Getting a good economics system is, I believe, a lot harder than
> managing the XP "problem."  It requires not only good code for
> tracking the system, but also requires a lot of effort on the part
> of the designers and the server administrators.

The game economy is much harder to balance, because goods can be
passed from player to player.  (Unlike personal advancement via xp
or some other system.)

               - Damien
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