XP system flawed?

[seebs]

You mean in a "different" system, not necessarily a "better" system.

I'd guess he meant "better".

That something is done way A in LoG and way B in all other games does not mean LoG is doing it wrong. It means LoG is doing it different.

Agreed. What makes it wrong is consideration of some game design principles, like "games should reward skilled play".

A game that penalizes you for doing your best is broken.

However, it should be kept in mind as part of the whole system, not on it's own. Since your characters can and frequently will miss out on XP, the game is balanced around your characters leveling a little slower than would be completely optimal.

Red herring; you could adjust the XP targets if you wanted to to change this.

You can still get the optimal XP by making sure each character always tags each mob (really not that hard to do, especially considering ranged weapons always hit), so if you love to min-max stuff, you are able to get a little more XP in than the game's balanced around, which might actually interest some players.

It's actually very hard to do if a slow weapon misses and you have mages. In particular, try skeleton quads; it is surprisingly hard to get all four skeletons tagged by each character.

[Thels]

Obviously if a snail gives 60xp per person now (30xp to those that missed it), in a better system it would give 240xp divided among party members. Same total, less fuss. There's still room there to give bigger shares to some chars and have chars not all 4 lvlup at the same time and whatnot.

You mean in a "different" system, not necessarily a "better" system.

Technically yes, but at this point I think we've proven that a different system would be better logically (naysayers notwithstanding).

The game is NOT balanced around your characters leveling a little slower than would be completely optimal. You can still lvlup almost optimally. The DEVs could still raise the xp required per lvlup. This is just not a proper argument in this case sorry.
Our whole point is that assigning xp totals to mobs is more logical.

Is it? It feels more natural, that I agree, but I can't tell you how my opinion of that is influenced by other games.

"You share in the action, you gain full experience." and "You stand by and watch, you gain half experience." are both perfectly logical arguments.

"A mob grants a fixed amount of total XP, regardless if you beat it down with one, two, three or four characters." actually sounds less logical if you think about it.

After that all is fair game. Shares don't have to be equal. Leveling speed can be adjusted.

You do realize that that will bother just about as much players, who would like for all their characters to gain XP steadily together?

I'll give you that if dead chars didn't get shares then that could lead to over-leveling one char parties, but would that be so terrible after all? It's not like it would become too imba. Providing xp for higher lvls scaled properly and power kept on increasing in small linear steps like now.

If gaining a little more XP is not something you worry about, why does gaining a little less XP worry you so much?

You can still get the optimal XP... look at your wording there. It's like you're saying you "can" still do it despite the flaws. You're almost admitting unconsciously that there is a flaw there.

I never called it a flaw, so your argument here doesn't make a lot of sense. You don't have to min-max your XP gain, but you can, if you put in some effort. Some people are perfectionists and will make sure all their characters get a hit in during every fight, and earn a little more XP than those that don't care too much about it, and will miss out on some XP here and there.

There are places where you can farm mobs for XP, so I can either max my XP by making sure every one of my characters gets a hit in, or I can just go farm a bunch of mobs until I gained enough XP to satisfy myself. What's the problem, really?

OK lets discuss this properly guys. Put on your Metagaming hats. What does this system offers that others do not?
Remember you can have varied lvl chars with other systems too, don't bring that up again (it's a fallacious argument).
What do other systems offer?
Discuss logically, from a game designer's perspective, not from emotional backgrounds.

I think the current system is frustrating for some players for obvious reasons (detailed earlier).

Then those people worry too much. If they don't want to make sure all their characters are involved with every mob, they shouldn't worry about it. If they're scared about falling behind in XP and levels, they can always farm one of the endless spawns.

Also it's harder to balance the combat since players will be different party lvls even if they start with the exact same party.

Not harder to balance between one player grinding two extra levels on endless spawn mobs, where another doesn't, or one player making the optimal party, and another picking some of the wrong skills and traits.

If the system was changed to a per mob xp total with shares of that, how would it ruin your enjoyment of the game? Level up ranges may have to be adjusted, but they seem randomly chosen out of a hat anyway so no big deal. I haven't seen anyone here explain how it would matter to them? It wouldn't even remove the tedious process of tagging enemies. Everything would be nearly the same. Except you'd have more control over pushing some chars.

You know, it would be easier if they just gave all our characters 300 skill points from the get go, enough traits to pick all the options, and give each race +40 to all attributes. Would it also be more fun?

It wouldn't be bad to make the changes you suggest, having a fixed amount of XP per mob regardless of how many players tag it. However, not a bad thing is not the same thing as a better thing.

I for one actually would not like the option of killing off 3 characters just so the fourth character gains 400% of normal experience.

[Thels]

That something is done way A in LoG and way B in all other games does not mean LoG is doing it wrong. It means LoG is doing it different.

Agreed. What makes it wrong is consideration of some game design principles, like "games should reward skilled play".

A game that penalizes you for doing your best is broken.

That depends on the definition of "penalizes" and "doing your best". If you do your best to have all characters involved in the combat, then you don't get penalized. If you rather focus on playing the game than worrying about the stats, then again, the game doesn't penalize that, as you can have fun with the game, despite not all your characters getting max XP at every fight.

However, it should be kept in mind as part of the whole system, not on it's own. Since your characters can and frequently will miss out on XP, the game is balanced around your characters leveling a little slower than would be completely optimal.

Red herring; you could adjust the XP targets if you wanted to to change this.

Yes, you could. Your point? I didn't say missing out on XP is a way to balance the game. I said the game is balanced around the fact that you'll most likely miss out on some of the XP.

Your suggestion is like saying: "Let's provide all characters with +2 damage to all attacks, because then we can give all monsters -2 damage from all attacks!"

You can still get the optimal XP by making sure each character always tags each mob (really not that hard to do, especially considering ranged weapons always hit), so if you love to min-max stuff, you are able to get a little more XP in than the game's balanced around, which might actually interest some players.

It's actually very hard to do if a slow weapon misses and you have mages. In particular, try skeleton quads; it is surprisingly hard to get all four skeletons tagged by each character.

I've tried the skeleton squads. Every time a skeleton died, all my characters apparently had tagged it. Perhaps with a different set-up that is not so often the case, but then, you can beat the game without gaining max XP from every mob.



So one time for good measure, and then I'm saying this thread goodbye: The game is perfectly playable without every character receiving max XP from every mob, so therefor it is not a problem that not every character receives max XP from every mob.

[oodyboo]

"You can't use the "Shut up and take it" argument here (or the "it is cause I say it is" argument)"

"This is about a flaw in the logic of xp shares. No other game has used such a system as far as I know."
----------------------------------
"WoW is totally irrelevant, except for the emotional appeal to "old-school gamers hold WoW in contempt."
[...]
"Every game I have ever played that is not this game, which assigns XP to monsters at all has taught me that a monster's XP value is an attribute of the monster"
-----------------------------------

Ignoring the rather obvious inconsistencies in the above pairs of quotes, I would like to clarify a few things.

The claims of the current XP system being flawed/broken are based entirely on expectations formed by playing a handful of other Role Playing Games. Just looking at the numbers, you've probably played WoW, and so that's why it is often used as an example: The problem isn't that WoW does things differently, the problem is that you are trying to force the way WoW works on this game, and many players enjoy the uniqueness of LoG and do not want it being changed to be like other games simply because you expect it to behave like every other game. Again, WoW is only an example of the 'typical' RPG that nearly every single complaint on this forum uses as justification for why LoG is broken/wrong or must be fixed because it doesn't do X, Y, or Z like "every other game out there."

Also, there are many different experience systems used by many different games. Monster Exp sharing like you desire is definitely the most simple and common system, but that does not make it the best or only way to do it.

I actually prefer skill based experience progression (like an LP MUD vs a Diku MUD) and there are numerous games that implement experience progression using techniques like this. They are exploitable in different ways, so it's just a matter of preference.

There are other issues with your experience dividing system to consider, such as one character suddenly gaining exp and level 4 times as fast as normal simply because their party members are dead. This can cause all sorts of balance headaches.

If I'm fighting a monster and my buddy takes an arrow to the face and dies, should I get his experience? That doesn't make much logical sense either.

And the MAIN reason that there is so much resistance to the myriad of threads that want LoG to be changed "like every other RPG" is that you are completely missing the excellent design of the LoG system. This "flaw," like most of the other "flaws" is already addressed. You just have to open your mind a little bit.

Monsters respawn indefinitely and there is no level cap. You can farm experience until the end of time if you want to. What this means is that there is absolutely no drawback in the rare cases when one of your characters misses exp on a particular monster. You can kill as many as you want to make up for it, and in fact it is faster, less tedious, and your party will end up with even more XP than you would gain from OCDing on the XP gains. And killing those extra monsters will drop even more food for your hungry prisoners. How's that for convenient?

These expectations are as flawed as you think the XP system is.

"We" don't hate suggestions, or pointing out bugs (like the XP based on slot instead of character issue) , "we" don't even hate WoW. What "we" hate are people posting half-baked ideas based on conformity to expectations of other games with such a blind devotion and ignorance of the big picture that they assert their opinions as fact and demand to break our beloved LoG.

Seriously it's a great game and if you can set aside your OCD perfectionism for a bit I think you will find the game gets even better. I know that worked for me anyway.

Now get off my lawn you damn kids! =p

[Kostas]

Now everyone, please stop engaging me into arguments. I posted my opinion, didn't realise I was signing up for a debate. Ty

You've only got yourself to blame then :p

[seebs]

Our whole point is that assigning xp totals to mobs is more logical.

Is it? It feels more natural, that I agree, but I can't tell you how my opinion of that is influenced by other games.

There are a ton of options. Nearly every game has started with a basic notion that the value of a mob is intrinsic to it, and then divided XP in some ways. Answers include:

• Evenly divided
• Divided in some way based on relative levels or contribution
• Divided, but decreased if mob is outnumbered
• Divided, but increased in a group
• Any of the above, with scaling for relative levels

The general RPG premise is that you divide roughly equally (or scale a bit by levels) because otherwise you create incentives for stupid behavior. If there's some activities that yield XP, and others that don't, you punish players for not pursuing the ones that count -- even if something else would have been better for the group. In traditional D&D, you all get XP for all the fights even though some people only participate significantly in some fights, because the group as a whole has overcome the adventure, and giving the thief XP for monsters even though his main contribution is picking locks lets you keep a viable adventuring party, even before the invention of XP for non-monster challenges.

And really, that premise was there in 1E AD&D, explained pretty well, and it has made sense ever since. The only reason to give more XP for killing monsters in fancier ways is "you're getting more practice", in which case why not reward people even more for whacking on a monster for a long time with a weapon they suck at?

[King Semos]

Now everyone, please stop engaging me into arguments. I posted my opinion, didn't realise I was signing up for a debate. Ty

You've only got yourself to blame then :p

Yes just me, apologies, good luck to you.

[seebs]

That something is done way A in LoG and way B in all other games does not mean LoG is doing it wrong. It means LoG is doing it different.

Agreed. What makes it wrong is consideration of some game design principles, like "games should reward skilled play".

A game that penalizes you for doing your best is broken.

That depends on the definition of "penalizes" and "doing your best". If you do your best to have all characters involved in the combat, then you don't get penalized. If you rather focus on playing the game than worrying about the stats, then again, the game doesn't penalize that, as you can have fun with the game, despite not all your characters getting max XP at every fight.

The game most certainly does penalize ignoring the XP rules -- you get less XP. "Less reward because you didn't do X" is a kind of "penalize". And it certainly penalizes following them -- you use a lot more food.

And doing your best ought to mean "playing for maximal efficiency". That ought to get decent rewards, not reduced rewards.

[Arctor]

Not sure why you think this is a flaw.

I think this is a symptom related to the abject stupidity of leveling systems like the one seen in Dragon Age (where even characters sitting back at the castle are earning EXP while some small subset of characters are out adventuring - mind-blowingly stupid) and other recent RPGs that keep EXP equalized to offset the design decisions that were made in the "story arc" and such where areas of the game become impossible without a party of equally powerful characters.

Dungeon Master, and via homage, LOG, approach EXP in the same what that 1st Ed. AD&D did. What did you do in the battle? Get appropriate EXP. Admittedly, it's simplified compared to AD&D, but that's not a bad thing. LOG celebrates the fact that you may have a disadvantage in your party because of a character who is leveling slower than others. It's fantastic!

• Evenly divided
• Divided in some way based on relative levels or contribution
• Divided, but decreased if mob is outnumbered
• Divided, but increased in a group
• Any of the above, with scaling for relative levels

And thus, I would add to the list the "Everyone's a winner" system from Dragon Age. If only to reinforce the fact that there is some stunningly bad RPG game design going on out in the world, lest we forget. In games that sell millions of copies, no less.

[Kostas]

Dungeon Master, and via homage, LOG, approach EXP in the same what that 1st Ed. AD&D did. What did you do in the battle? Get appropriate EXP. Admittedly, it's simplified compared to AD&D, but that's not a bad thing. LOG celebrates the fact that you may have a disadvantage in your party because of a character who is leveling slower than others. It's fantastic!

That's untrue.

DM did not give xp in a way similar to LoG at all. Nor did AD&D.

DM gave xp for each character totally separately, for doing actions. That's why we put the mouse pointer on attack with a weapon and put a joystick in the mouse port to use the auto-fire switch on it and attack a door with various weapons so we could get our fighter and ninja skills up while we read a book or ate lunch.

AD&D had party rewards for combat. The person guarding the rear was deemed as important as the ones deep in combat. There was no extra xp for killshots or hits and spells landed. (there was some optional situational xp for actions and spells cast iirc).

LoG does not celebrate any such fact as you mention. It's just a side-effect.
Besides in some of the systems we proposed here people would have party members of different xp lvls too. Did you not understand that?

Seebs's point may need elaboration. He says "The general RPG premise is that you divide roughly equally (or scale a bit by levels) because otherwise you create incentives for stupid behavior."
He means that when you find a squad of 4 skeletons your 2 mages could obliterate the whole squad with 2 spells each while your front row fighter and rogue sweep up the remains. But instead you're "forced" by the game mechanics to only cast 1 spell by each mage to make sure your chars without AoE attacks can tag all the skellies. That's what he means by incentives for stupid behavior.
Or another example, lets say you have 4 rogues party. You meet a lone skeleton. You attack with all 4 and the first one misses, others hit. Second round of attacks and first char misses again, others some hit some don't. Now you're getting worried, what if my first char misses again and my other chars kill the mob? I'll miss out on some xp. So you stop attacking with 3 chars and just sidestep and wait for that one char to be out of cooldown. That's just stupid behavior, but the game mechanics create incentive for it (xp).
Now don't tell me it's not critical, game is easy, stuff like that.
If it's not critical to you WHY do you care either way? It shouldn't affect you. Stop posting fallacious arguments about things you don't even care about.


For the others I reiterate:
(OK don't tell me the game doesn't need balance cause it's too easy anyway, this is just a discussion of merits of xp systems. Besides if you think the game is too easy or it's won in other parts (strafing, etc) then why do you care about the xp system anyway? It shouldn't matter one way or the other to you)