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

[ceo]

Bloo wrote:
> Ben Hawes wrote:

>> The toruble with XP, as has been said, is if you earn it for
>> driving and shooting (say), then even people who want to drive
>> will go around shooting if that offers better XP. It is variety,
>> not simplicity, that we need.

> Why not take the experience point question a bit further and ask
> why there should be any 'advancement' at all?

> Sure, its appropriate for games that are about growing, but too
> often it, and the whole idea of experience points and levels, are
> a design crutch.  GTA3 doesn't really have any character
> advancement at all.  It has money, stuff, and story (and several
> dozen metrics like Longest Wheelie, but those are minor IMO).  The
> only thing that advances really is the story.

When you look it like that you have to be careful not to miss the
difference between advancement-as-score, and advancement-as-fun.

The concept of "score" in games is massively important (took me many
years to realise just how important - on the same level of
importance as the mechanic of choice having long-term side-effects
instead of being unimportant or entirely absent). Score without
advancement is seen in space invaders (your ship never gets bigger,
better, etc).

On the other side, advancement is one of those deeply satisfying and
pleasurable experiences. Advancement without score is seen in
virtual pets (tamagotchi etc).

IMHO most advancement in MMORPG's is for pleasure; where this is
true, it is not merely a design crutch (although it may well be that
too - "we need a way to keep people playing! Uh, how about levels
and XP?").  Some games it's for score more than for pleasure, but
they are the minority (off the top of my head).

To give a concrete example of where score is unrelated to pleasure,
ranking, etc, I was reviewing a hobbyist arcade game a couple of
weeks ago where there was no score and no points. I coerced the
author into adding a score, and explained the primary aim was merely
to give the players context-sensitive feedback on what actions
in-game were "good" and which were "bad"; the powerups and
powerdowns differed only in colour, and in the thick of the action
working out the meaning was hard - especially seeing as this game
hasn't yet got separate instructions/manual etc.

He added the score, and instantly a lot of the confusion of
playtesters disappeared - people could infer the gameplay, the need
to "avoid" certain things whilst collecting others, directly
themselves. Made the game more fun for some people too, I guess
because they'd just "collected everything on the screen" previously,
but now were challenged to pick and manoeuvre carefully. The author
added a nice touch too - when you hit something, a popup score
modifiere appeared (+50, -10, +5, etc), making it even more obvious.

Adam M
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