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

[Freeman, Jeff]

Vincent Archer wrote:

> The XP highway is often more efficient, a lot safer, and=20 above
> all, more reliable. But if you don't force the player=20 to
> confront many variations of situations, he won't acquire=20 play
> skills. It's like a chess player that never sees=20 anything
> played outside of D2-D4.  The day someone starts by=20 E2-E4, he
> doesn't know how to react.

I like the approach D&D Online is taking, where you earn XP by
completing objectives (e.g. "Kill the boss monster in this dungeon,
get a bunch of XP for 'winning the dungeon'"), but not for killing
indivual creatures.  In the end, it should work out the same

  - you killed 10 orcs and the boss and were awarded a=20 total of
  100 XP.

versus:

  - you killed the boss (and incidentally, 10 orcs along the way
  tried to stop you, and you killed those for no xp), and were
  awarded 100 XP.

The only problem I see with XP is when it is awarded on a per-kill
basis.  Because it introduces a third path:

  - I killed 10 orcs, waited for them to respawn, killed them again,
  for a total of 100 XP.  P.S. Your game is boring.

But some players prefer the option of taking the safe-route.  If you
say, "You cannot advance unless you do X" then they will suggest,
"Can't I just do something really long, boring, tedious and repetive
instead?  X might be too hard."

And then they want the perfect balance of that: Is the alternate
easy path too long, boring, tedious and repetive?  Is the boss
monster so hard that everyone takes the boring path?  Or so easy
that almost no one takes it?

"Perfect balance" being completely different for every player, every
group of players, and different at night than during the day and
different on Saturday than Thursday evening.
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