Quote:Original post by TechnoGoth
I’m curious if anyone has played a game where the returns and growth rate increase as you “level up” rather than decrease? And did it work?

EDIT: I'm assuming you mean "growth rate" that it actually takes less time to level up at higher levels - more rewarding enemies are a non-issue if they also take proportionally longer to kill.
/EDIT

I can't recall any games where growth rate actually increases, although I suppose a few approach a linear progression as monster EXP grows roughly in line with level-up EXP.

I can think of a few reasons why such a growth rate has been avoided in games to date:

1. Realism (making magic/combat skills "easy to learn, hard to master" just seems more realistic to me)

2. Pacing. If using some form of skill tree, it makes sense for lower level players to be quickly able to obtain a few basic spells/abilities to allow some kind of combat strategy. Also a high level player will presumably be much deeper into tactics and strategy, and so it will take them longer to become effective with a new skill and integrate it into their play-style before they need to advance

3. Balance. In an online game, diminishing returns is a great equalizer as it means that high level players are roughly comparable in strength. With the increasing growth rate you suggest, differences in players (e.g. due to some playing 8 hours a day and others 10) will be greatly magnified, making an interesting PvP matchup far less likely

4. Content problems. Current systems prevent players from consuming all of the content in the game too quickly. In effect, they do this by forcing some kind of grind - so it's debatable if this is a good way to solve the problem. Maybe games should have the same amount of content but take less time to complete.

Why would you do such a thing? I can see the point in strategy games, where it ensures a winning player can actually win, but RPG's are the opposite. With RPGs you expect rapid progress to start, but you end up getting attached to your character(s) and don't really want the game to end.

Quote:Original post by TechnoGoth
My overall thinking was the as the game progresses the player should be taking on progressively more difficult challenges. The greater the challenge, the greater the reward, and the greater the benefit. The game itself is freeform and ends when the player either retires or is killed.

If the challenge becomes greater in "real" terms (i.e. even when increased character strength and player skill is taken into account) then presumably the player will be able to complete fewer of these high-level challenges in a given timeframe.

In this case, I don't really see a problem - I quite like the idea of a game where a player can level-up once for each encounter completed, with battles becoming more and more epic as they progress.

If you move away from XP, you'll find that many other elements of games have been offering increasing rewards, most obviously in terms of money. For instance, in the various Ogre Battle games I might have to do a few missions at the beginning to get enough money to hire and equip a new soldier, but as time goes by and my strength increases, I embark on campaigns with such rich rewards that I can easily recruit a whole battalion after I complete one.

Of course, traditionally you are faced with greater expenses, higher-cost skills or massively inflated XP requirements, which just leads to the fights and rewards being a dimishing return on a rapidly inflating scale, so you get bigger and bigger numbers that represent a smaller and smaller portion of your quota.

So you get the feeling of asymptotically approaching perfection. If rewards were to increase, you'd be on a slippery slope toward apotheosis, which would be awkward. You'd be getting tougher and tougher and tougher so fast that either it would get silly or you'd hit a wall when you max out and it would be weird.

So what would the game turn into? You kill 100 level 1 enemies to get to level 2, and then you kill 90 level 2 enemies, up to 10 level 10 enemies, and then how do you get to level 12? Kill 1 level 11 dragon? What if you kill a bunch of level 10 guys instead? Could a player just live below his means, grinding mobs a level beneath him to level traditionally, or would he have to fight in his bracket to get points?

The only real way I can see this working would be if you did away with XP entirely and awarded levels based on achievements, or even just gave a level up at the end of each "episode" of a linear game, where each section was balanced for the level the player would be at when he finished the last one.

The Disgaea games on PS2 are tactical RPGs with increasing growth rate. There are also PSP and PS3 versions but I haven't played those. I assume it'd be the same though.