Alternative means of Leveling/Experience Options

[Titanhex]

Hi, I wanted to open a discussion on the topic of Experience.

More often than not we find ourselves grinding against monsters to earn experience. It's become the staple of leveling. It works and it's effective, but there are other means of getting Experience or making the player level that can be far more interesting. That is what I want to have tossed around here, ideas like that. Whether its your original idea or one you've seen and liked.

I had the idea recently to make it so when you win a fight, you don't gain EXP. You gain Battle Points. Every character has to go to a trainer to level up. And not all characters level on battle points alone.

It's like a monetary exchange for leveling up. Level 10 for a Mage would require 30 Battle Points and 2 Puzzle Points. You would get puzzle points by completing puzzles in a dungeon. Or maybe the mage requires Garden Points, which you get by tending to a garden.

A thief could require gold.

Etc. etc.

That was one idea I had.

[Kaust]

Some games have exp as rewards for quests, kinda like your monetary system.

I've been working on a exp ring (just as a little bonus) that gives the equipped character a small amount as they walk around to simulate time

[Essenceblade]

Well, traditional leveling is one of those things that people make or break. There's nothing bad about it, but it does seem kind of repetitive. Especially with the fact that not only do they add a sense of linearity, they are just too boring.

Alas why I've decided to add a leveling system, and skill grid system.

Basically, in my system, you still keep your traditional levels, but leveling off just those isn't enough, you can be level 50 with as much as only 400 HP (which is drastically low, in my games algorithms terms). As a bonus, you also gain a type of currency called "Essencilis" which is the custom form of say, Battle Points or Skill Points.

Basically, you get a select number per battle as ordinarily along with EXP, and you spend your Essencilis respectively. As you proceed around the Skill Grid, you come across many things such as "HP+10" "Defence+5" ect. Much like the Sphere Grid system of ff10, but there is a big variance.

Occasionally you come across level locks which block off skills or parts of the skill grid. For example, a player has a level 5 Dance-weaver who wants to learn Tragic Samba, it costs 50 Essencilis, and they have that, but the ability itself is level 10 minimum. So they need to level up to 10 or higher and retain the minimum of 50 ES before they can "purchase" the ability.

Mages work the same way too. You need to buy the magic, learn it on the grid, and meet the conditions of the spell before you can cast it. I added this because I don't want people rushing through the game and then finding out they can get the strongest spell ect. early at such a low level.

Illusionist: Lv 26, has the spell Enhasten, but can't use it until they meet the Skill Grid requirements.
Essencilis: 44 pts

Enhasten (spell on skill grid)

Essencilis: 49 pts
Min lv. Illusionist 31

So the illusionist has the scroll, but cannot use it until they become a high enough level, and obtain the necessary ES points before using it.

This doesn't just go for abilities or spells, it goes for weapon abilities and traits too. So from my idea I use both the traditional leveling, and a refurbished leveling system and intertwine them. So they player has and can, forge their own paths of their leveling instead of just expecting "Fire" at level 24, and then "Blizzard" at 30 and so on.

I also added a trait restriction to this. So for example, you cannot learn the trait "Overwhelm" without learning the trait "Brave Stance". Meaning the player must back track, and not speed ahead, going down the fastest path available.

[bulmabriefs144]

I have adaptive gain (like FinalFantasy2J, Romancing SaGa), but it's tricky enough that I only did it for one character (I did alot of customized characters, experimenting with things).

[Jens of Zanicuud]

I often used linear growth:

EXP is required, but there's no level jump.
Parameters grow gradually, according to EXP percentage.

Algorithm = base_stat + (max_stat-base_stat)*exp_percentage

Example:

Stat_max = 1000

Exp: 0% || stats = 100

Exp: 10% || stats = 100 + (1000 - 100) * 10/100 = 190

Exp: 20% || stats = 100 + (1000 - 100) * 20/100 = 280

And so on...

Jens

[amerk]

I had an idea awhile back that was sort of similar to Final Fantasy II (for the NES). Now, we already have scripts that allow the player to distribute AP points to stats whenever they level up, so they essentially decide what stats to boost or not, and while my idea was similar, it's also sort of different.

Rather than a person leveling up all their stats by some computer-coded design, or boosting their stats 1 point per AP, what I thought was this:

A person fights a battle and gets a set amount of EXP. However, their is no level up feature, at least not by traditional means. The EXP goes into a sort of bucket they have access to whenever they wish to level up. So they can access it right after the first fight at say around 5 or 10 EXP, or even grind til their hearts content until they have 100 EXP or more.

Every stat has it's own level up feature, and every character starts at the very basic set up. As an example:

HP Level 1 = 50 HP
MP, Def, Str, Agl, Spi would all be around 10 points at Level 1 to start.

Let's say that to get to Level 2 for any stat and increase HP by 10 points, and everything else by 5 points, you would have to apply EXP towards the stat of your choice. So to get to Level 2 for any stat, you'd apply about 5 EXP points, Level 3 maybe about 10 EXP points, Level 4 about 20 EXP points, and so forth.

I'm currently at Level 1, I fight a monster and gain 5 total EXP. Now at this point, I can choose to bank the EXP for later use, or I can access it and use it. I can apply all 5 EXP towards one stat and level that stat up, or I can spread it out over all stats, and then continue fighting until I've earned more EXP that I can spread around.

This way, a person has complete control over their character's growth. They may choose to create a balanced party where everybody has weaknesses and strengths, they may decide to make their party a super tank with little to no magic, or they may make a party of mages. They may foolishly continue applying their EXP towards one stat, making them cumbersome and weak in the long run, or they may apply intelligence to save EXP so that they can build up their supply and use it wisely.

If only there was a way to bank EXP for use towards stats (like AP) that would allow this, I think it'd make an interesting alternative to level grinding.

[Storm237]

Using things like Gold for Thiefs, and maybe like books, or orbs or scrolls or something for mages would be an amazing idea. Trying to name a game that does that, but none off the top of my head.

[Shaddow]

I had an idea for this based on an old text-based MUD I used to admin for. It was a Dragonball flavored MUD but it was a good idea.

They did away with level and experience all together. Instead it was replaced with powerlevel, which was simply renamed xp. How this worked was that the more you fought the higher your powerlevel went. The enemies also had a powerlevel or PL and this was what was determined to how strong you were. They did not do away with stats, instead how this worked is you had your base stats, in the case of the online game it was 10 default for all. We could vary this up depending on the class of course. At certain PL milestones you got 5 training points, you would then take these points to a place you could train, in this case a gravity chamber, and 'train' your stat until it went up. This gained you powerlevel depending on your current pl and the gravity you were training under, but also injured you consistently depending on your pl vs the level of gravity. So you couldn't just max it out as a lowbie and not die.

Skills were determined in a similar manner, at milestones you would unlock new abilities, for example 5000 pl unlocked basic energy ball. and 10,000 pl unlocked flight. Now you didn't just instantly learn these either, some required quests,. some required a trigger and others simply required a trainer to teach you.

For example getting super saiyan on required you to constantly fight at near death after reaching 1,000,000 pl and hoping you did not die, until the transformation happened. Skills were not maxed out immediately after learning them either, they went up with use and got stronger, more accurate or more efficient.

For example going super saiyan increased your current pl by 4x, of course your base pl always remains the same. which let you fight stronger foes. the trade off was that it constantly drained your energy and you had a chance of removing the transform in battle, this could be dangerous. As you trained your super saiyan by fighting in the form, it got more and more skilled and eventually the energy drain faded away and your power level multiplier even increased.

As you can see this has a lot of viable options. you can even set up conditional branches with it. For example you have a 5000 pl enemy but you only want the item they have to drop if the foe is between 4500 pl and 6500 pl, you can set it up so the item will never drop if you aren't within those parameters. A way to make this not suck for people who level to much is a suppression type option. an ability to lower your current pl to a certain level to be able to use these things. your battle strength lowers with your pl so this can be dangerous.

Anyways this kind of turned into a rant, I hope I explained this well. I'd honestly like to see this style of leveling go in. It can be used for far more then just dragonball fan games or whatever, but it opens a TON of options.

[Kaust]

...I would like to play this game ^

Whats it called Shadowval and is it one of the textbased MUDs?


...But to validate detracting from the OP, games that give a little xp for hitting a foe (typically hacknslash types) are always nice to play. Just makes grinding a bit more bearable, and even if you lose or run away you still get a little something.