[MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point...

[Vincent Archer]

According to cruise:
> Thus spake Caliban Darklock...
...
> >Pretty soon, you get "This monster is just like the last one, only
> >orange!" syndrome. Internally, the achievement only happens once. To
> >the player, however, each of these scenarios is still the same one
> >over and over. Every time you deliver an item to someone, it's the
> >same damn quest. The player doesn't say "thank God I'm delivering
> >different items to different people!", he says "WTF, am I paying
> >$14.95 a month to run a damn delivery service?"
>
> Which of course is sooooo different from how the the current XP system
> functions...

That's to be expected. As Caliban notes, the biggest problem of game
designers is designing and producing "different" content. As there's not
an infinite amount of different types of content, you do have to resort
to different *presentation* of the same content type.

Fundamentally, each monster in game is a monster. Only orange. You
achieve variety by having the monster:

- using different attacks (he's a melee, he's a caster)
- being vulnerable to different attacks (he's got high AC, he's
vulnerable to blunt weapons)
- having different stats (he's got lots of HP and low atk, he's got
little hp but hits like a truck)
- being in different contexts (he's alone in a camp, he's patrolling)
- being in different tactical setups (he's alone, he's in a group, he
has a healer backup)

> I don't know the numbers for other games, but I know for CoH the higher
> levels require you to kill several thousand enemies for enough xp to

Yup. And that works well when you want a reward system for killing a
monster. Each monster gives a reward. If you design your game as "you
get level N in 8 to 10 hours", you take the number of ennemies a player
defeats in 10 hours, multiply by the xp they give, and get the xp to
level.

The attendant problem being, of course, that the players are pretty good
at figuring the type of mob that gives the highest xp/minute ratio, and
end up killing that single mob over and over. That was the EQ model for
years, and probably the single most boring thing...

> ding. The most this system would require for a level is 50. If the

And that's pretty hard. Because, to get from level 50 to 51, you need to
kill 50 DIFFERENT LEVEL monsters from 50 and above. So you need to kill
a level 50 mob, true, but you need to kill a level 99 mob as well. Which
might be slightly harder (if doable).

> Thus spake Caliban Darklock...
> >Can you even THINK of 6275 tasks? If it takes one hour for a designer
> >to build one (HAHAHAHAHA... sorry), that's three years. What's the

You're mixing quests and achievements. A designer takes an hour to build
a quest because he has various tagging to do, find a quest giver, write
dialogs, and so on.

I'm not talking about implementing an achievement system as a set of
quests. Quite frankly, if all I have as a tool is a WoW code base, I
wouldn't even think of doing it.

Achievements are not individual quests. Achievements are individual
tactical situations. An achievement trigger can be: 

- kill a mob solo 
- kill a mob in a small group 
- kill a mob in a big group 
- kill a mob in a large raid 
- kill a mob from a group of 2 mobs 
- kill a mob from a group of 3 mobs (and so on) 
- kill a mob from a group of 4 mobs without anybody dying

Plus other achievements that are group oriented. Pulling a mob aggro off
another character for a tank. Keeping 3 mobs mesmerized during a fight
for an enchanter character.

That takes more time than designing a quest. On the other hand,
achievements are not completed in 1mn either. Trying to find yourself in
a situation where you NEED to mesmerize 3 mobs may very well take an
expedition to plan. You do need to get in a dungeon where you will have
4 mobs, of sufficient level, at the same time.

> >In a world where the most expensive and difficult part of your
> >development cycle is the production of enough content to keep your
> >players happy, actively forbidding your players to enjoy the same
> >content repeatedly is pretty retarded.
>
> How on earth are you "forbidding" players from enjoying the same
> content? It's still just as enjoyable as it was before, unless the only
> "enjoyment" was the reward - in which case your game is pretty damn
> sucky anyway, and you have bigger problems than the advancement model.

To be honest, he has a point. As most MMO have problems providing varied
content, the cop-out of having repeatable content is fairly common. Once
you start expecting your players to have to repeat content, then making
sure it is rewarding to repeat content is important.

You can reward repeating content. In fact, since a game built around the
achievement model would probably face the same "player needs to find
something to occupy 1000 hours of game play" problem, you have to find
rewards.

They just don't have to be XP. In fact, in WoW, the majority of player
don't repeat much content until they max their level, so they're not
repeating the content for the level progression. At max level, they're
repeating the content for other things, usually getting some resources
(farming "primals"), getting cash for goodies, getting items (doing
dungeon). 

> >But the problem is a nail. Which is precisely why people are saying
> >GET A HAMMER, NOT AN UMBRELLA. We're not saying that the system you
> >have is a hammer. We're saying that you're trying to drive a nail, and
> >your tool is not good for driving nails.
>
> You're telling us the problem is a nail. We're trying to explain it's not :P

That's because we're fundamentally looking at the term "level" from two
different angles. The level Caliban talks about is the level of the
EQ/WOW/LOTRO style of games, which is the determining factor of power of
your character, and a reward to the player. The level I'm talking about
is the level *other* people see when they look at your character, and
which they use to gauge your capacity. That's why he said that I was
designing a ranking system, not a "level" system.

And that's what it is. If you're interested in your character
progression, and want a level to drive it, xp-systems are good. But if
you're interested in character capacity, then the xp-derived level is
not a particularly good indicator. And that's what I was looking for. A
level that tells me what a character, mine *or another* can do, not a
level that *determines* what the character can do.

The system reverses the progression/level relationship. In xp-driven
systems, you gain a level, your character progresses. In an achievement
driven model, your character progresses, you gain levels by virtue of
proving your achievement (and mastery).

I have no problems in a level 5 character having as much hit points and
doing bigger damage than a level 50 character. The level 50 has proved
(to the game system) that he can handle the situations the game
provides. The level 5 has only proved he's got good friends who
"twinked" him, but he has not played the game yet. Yes, he has 12000 hit
points. But can he hold aggro on the boss and tank it to the end of the
fight? That's what I am interested in knowing.