Experience gaining in multiplayer RPG
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I just want to discuss the possible ways to handle sharing experince in a cRPG. I am thinking about a multiplayer game with say 32 players around (with servers like an egoshooter where you can connect on the fly and don't really know the other people on the server), even though same mechanics probably can be used in a MMORPG.
There are two problems, sharing experience belong partymembers, and experience from monster killing:
Sharing experience in a party
I have seen MUDs dealing this where all people of the party gain same amount of xp (both ways only if they are in the same room or whereever they are). This could lead to have one powerchar gaining tons of XP and leveling other partymembers while they sleep.
You could stop this by adding levels of chars into the function when sharing XP, but again you can have one char with the godlike gear doing all work, while other chars of the same level just sit beside and leech.
Experience from killing:
Final strike gains experience
The one who kills the monster gains the full xp. (for parties see before). This will lead to kill steals, where people lurk around and wait until a monster is low on hp just to hop out and deal the finishing strike just in time.
Locking monsters once they are touched could bring some idiots run to an area and touch all available monsters, disabling to gain experience for others.
Sharing between slayers
experience also could be shared among the involved characteres: you had to remember who dealt how much damage to a monster, and on killing the monster you share the experience. when the monster is fully regened, you reset those shares.
This basically is a coding problem, as you have to remember many of those relations.
Experience for each damage
another way to deal this problem is to give experience each time you hurt a monster. Again there are problems:
- Casting a "weaken" spell on a monster will not gain me any experience even while I probably made it possible to kill the monster at all.
- Again there can be a experience thief just slapping the monster right to get experience while other have to deal the danger of them.
- There could be experience farming from a strong monster by just hurting (but not killing) it from a safe distance, or through a crack in the mountain so the monster can't strike back.
I am interested in each idea and comment to improve gaining experience.
As you say, there are many ways to contribute to a fight, other than doing the actual damage. You'd have to reward ALL those things (speels, healing, sneaks...) as well, and this might lead to difficult game balancing.
I don't see what's wrong with party xp. You gain xp if you are in the same party and if you were kind of close to the fight. Not every player gains the same amount of experience, based on their level. For the same monster, lower-level characters gain more xp than the higher-level ones. (of course you'll need a cap here)
Why would you want to prevent a slightly higher-level character from "teaching" the young guns how to fight? I don't see the exploit here to be honest...
I don't see what's wrong with party xp. You gain xp if you are in the same party and if you were kind of close to the fight. Not every player gains the same amount of experience, based on their level. For the same monster, lower-level characters gain more xp than the higher-level ones. (of course you'll need a cap here)
Why would you want to prevent a slightly higher-level character from "teaching" the young guns how to fight? I don't see the exploit here to be honest...
this seems to me as the most fair solution - every character involved in a battle should gain exp, even for just healing other character or poisoning a monster from a safe distance. it's up to you then to determina right amount of pts for each character, you may advantage lower level characters or those closer to monster (thus in more danger), those more active in combat etc.
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Quote:Original post by grbrg
Why would you want to prevent a slightly higher-level character from "teaching" the young guns how to fight? I don't see the exploit here to be honest...
I don't want to stop some slightly more experienced from introducing low people, but stop "powerleveling". I played DiabloII some time ago and you were able to powerlevel new characters pretty easy. That's lame.
So you think it is ok to share party xp as long members of the party are close enough to the combat and the level difference isn't to big. That's ok for me too, but I've learned I am blind to some aspects some times, so I try to crosscheck everything.
(If party gains XP for solving a quest it is sure the XP should divided equally among the party members, no matter the levels... or..?)
Anything on the killstealing problem?
Keep a rolling "Exp Worth" percentage thats unique to each character and depends on their actions. Abandon any hopes of a fair and even distribution, and just focus on making sure each player is maintaining their own "worth". Cap it at 100% and you face at the very least a 32x overvaluation. Then again, killing a really tough enemy all by yourself would causing a 255% exp worth wouldn't get any complaints.
How about a change of pace. It seems to me that experience gain in a group is a solved problem. There's ten different mmorpg's out there that do it. The wheel is already round, why make it square?
Instead, if you really want to innovate, pull back out a level. Why have experience points at all? Is there a better way to track progress? If you want to really open your mind, ask yourself if you need a mechanism to track progress at all.
Here's the thing, if we look at mmorpg's as an extension of table-top RPG's -- which, in my opinion is an apt analogy -- let's look at the most well known of them all. AD&D. That game is more about party interaction and problem solving than it is about getting to the next level.
If you wan't to design an mmorpg with the prototypical level treadmill, I wish you all the luck in the world, but it will take a lot more than a multiplying an experience number by .32 instead of .25779 to make yourself stand out in the crowd.
Instead, if you really want to innovate, pull back out a level. Why have experience points at all? Is there a better way to track progress? If you want to really open your mind, ask yourself if you need a mechanism to track progress at all.
Here's the thing, if we look at mmorpg's as an extension of table-top RPG's -- which, in my opinion is an apt analogy -- let's look at the most well known of them all. AD&D. That game is more about party interaction and problem solving than it is about getting to the next level.
If you wan't to design an mmorpg with the prototypical level treadmill, I wish you all the luck in the world, but it will take a lot more than a multiplying an experience number by .32 instead of .25779 to make yourself stand out in the crowd.
I am not a fan of xp-systems at all.
I personaly prefer skill gain by usage. This has the pros: 1.)Only chars who are activly fighting get skill. 2.) Chars that heal others can get skill gains too.
U have to balance skill gain on difficulty of enemy and characters current skill though.
Ultima Online (MMORPG) uses this system. But also some single player games (Morrowind for example). I think this is far better solution than experience point systems
I personaly prefer skill gain by usage. This has the pros: 1.)Only chars who are activly fighting get skill. 2.) Chars that heal others can get skill gains too.
U have to balance skill gain on difficulty of enemy and characters current skill though.
Ultima Online (MMORPG) uses this system. But also some single player games (Morrowind for example). I think this is far better solution than experience point systems
Author
Getting some off from the topic for a moment:
I discussed the XP/leveling vs. skill-gaining only with my groupmates a lot.
Having played pen&paper RPGs for many years, I like the XP-less systems way more than those with XPs.
Gaining 1% in swordfighting every now and then is more realistic than having a level and all of a sudden you increase 20 skills.
BUT:
The problem is you can't compare pen&paper to computer RPGs.
With pen&paper you meet up with your friends to have a nice time, while playing a game.
As developer of a computer RPG you have to care about keeping the players tuned to your game. You can't asume there are some friends meeting in your game to have a nice time.
Even if there is such a group, you have to keep this group tuned to YOUR game, keeping them from hopping to another game.
So you have to bring in as many character milestones as you can. Diablo did this pretty well:
- you have character levels to achieve.
- you have quests to complete.
- you have waypoints to activate.
- you have set items to collect.
Each time you think about taking a break, you have a goal almost finished (leveling/questing/waypoints) and players tend to continue playing if they are close to achievement of a goal. The moment they completed one of those, another is just a grasp away, so they keep on playing.
Without levels (and that is without experience to gain levels) there is a big loss on achievements, and players will stop playing (and not returning) easier.
So back to the topic:
I am still open minded to any other thought on experience gaining (may it be killing monsters, solving quests, discover a hidden region on the map, whatever)
[Edit]Fixed some typos[/Edit]
I discussed the XP/leveling vs. skill-gaining only with my groupmates a lot.
Having played pen&paper RPGs for many years, I like the XP-less systems way more than those with XPs.
Gaining 1% in swordfighting every now and then is more realistic than having a level and all of a sudden you increase 20 skills.
BUT:
The problem is you can't compare pen&paper to computer RPGs.
With pen&paper you meet up with your friends to have a nice time, while playing a game.
As developer of a computer RPG you have to care about keeping the players tuned to your game. You can't asume there are some friends meeting in your game to have a nice time.
Even if there is such a group, you have to keep this group tuned to YOUR game, keeping them from hopping to another game.
So you have to bring in as many character milestones as you can. Diablo did this pretty well:
- you have character levels to achieve.
- you have quests to complete.
- you have waypoints to activate.
- you have set items to collect.
Each time you think about taking a break, you have a goal almost finished (leveling/questing/waypoints) and players tend to continue playing if they are close to achievement of a goal. The moment they completed one of those, another is just a grasp away, so they keep on playing.
Without levels (and that is without experience to gain levels) there is a big loss on achievements, and players will stop playing (and not returning) easier.
So back to the topic:
I am still open minded to any other thought on experience gaining (may it be killing monsters, solving quests, discover a hidden region on the map, whatever)
[Edit]Fixed some typos[/Edit]
Quote:Original post by OmniBrain
...So you have to bring in as many character milestones as you can. ...Each time you think about taking a break, you have a goal almost finished (leveling/questing/waypoints) and players tend to continue playing if they are close to achievement of a goal. The moment they completed one of those, another is just a grasp away, so they keep on playing.
Without levels (and that is without experience to gain levels) there is a big loss on achievements, and players will stop playing (and not returning) easier.
Did u play Morrowind or Dungeon Siege? U could view the progress on gaining a new skill point. The progressbar had to fill up to 100% to get a skill point. So its quite the same with "achievements" in this system.
Quote:Original post by Jannes
I personaly prefer skill gain by usage. This has the pros: 1.)Only chars who are activly fighting get skill. 2.) Chars that heal others can get skill gains too.
Wanted to add 3.) Such a system prevents from unrealistic level raising. For example: Why should a warrior always fighting enemies with weapons be able to raise lockpicking or magery if he didnt ever use it? very unrealistic i think. This is like a person waking up in the morning realising he learnt a foreign language while sleeping.
P.S.: I see u are from Germany. Do u have a website? i am interested in your project ;)
Author
Quote:Original post by Jannes
I see u are from Germany. Do u have a website? i am interested in your project ;)
Just a closed forum for developers. And actually we are not accepting new developers (or can you do bone-animated fantasy models? ;) )
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