Experience/leveling system

[Black]

Do we know anything about how PE will handle levels and experience? I hope nothing is set in stone yet, because I'd like to give my feedback, the same I gave to Wasteland 2 guys.

I think the best experience system is the one games like Vampire Bloodlines, Deus Ex and Dark Messiah of M&M have. It encourages all the good stuff like completing quests, finding alternate routes, finding out secrets and so on. There's no reward for killing lots of trashy mobs. Since there's a finite amount of exp to gain, it makes the game easier to balance for developers.

 

 

Exp systems such as in Fallout are much more exploit-friendly, while, for example, systems such as in Arcanum (exp per hit etc) were totally dumb.

tl;dr single digit experience points for doing meaningful stuff, not for killing rats. Easier to manage both for devs and players, harder to exploit.

[metiman]

Of course you could also just choose not to have trash mobs. I'd be surprised if even Obsidian knows such specifics at this point.

[evdk]

Define meaningful stuff - completing quests, slaying epic monsters, completing challenges?

[Black]

Define meaningful stuff - completing quests, slaying epic monsters, completing challenges?

Yes, finding alternate routes to places, successfuly using your skills to overcome various obstacles etc.

[metiman]

I don't think that tl;dr stuff is necessary here. Check the age poll. Very few posters are teenagers and PS:T was the most popular game. I think the vast majority here are at least readers.

[Black]

I don't think that tl;dr stuff is necessary here. Check the age poll. Very few posters are teenagers and PS:T was the most popular game. I think the vast majority here are at least readers.

I don't have faith in people.

[Revan91]

I agree with the op.

Tim Cain, in his update, hinted that xp would be given to the players for reaching his goals rather than for killing things, and I hope Obsidian will choose that system for the game.

[Black]

Adding to this (and bumping in the process) I'd really like, though this is my personal preference, if XP gained and numbers in general were kept to low digits, maybe even single digit. Bloodlines had you gaining 2 or 3 exp points per objective for the most of the game and it worked really well because of how the character system works. Meanwhile games in which to gain another level require me to gain GORILLIONS of exp points remind of MMOs and their audience, kids that want to see huge numbers.

[mikayel]

Whether the numbers are big or not mostly depends on the system. In Bloodlines you increased your attributes, including base stats, at each level up. In D&D esque systems your base stats never change and most of your derived stats automatically increase with you only putting points directly into skills/feats. Low XP systems won't work in such a system, and my wild guess is that Eternity's new system is going to be like the latter.

[mrgloblo]

Of course you could also just choose not to have trash mobs. I'd be surprised if even Obsidian knows such specifics at this point.

 

It's RTWP. It's gonna have trash mobs.

 

Anyway, I agree with OP. Having the majority of exp coming from combat not only encourages grinding, but more importantly, limits players that want to avoid combat. Plus, this system doesn't prevent there from being exp rewards for very challenging fights, and it also encourages players to explore and do quests.

[SqueakyCat]

There is already a thread discussing this:

 

http://forums.obsidi...e-observations/

 

Is another thread necessary? You should at least look there to get a feel for the community's opinion.

 

There's additional information from a developer who discussed it on the Kickstarter Discussion area as well.

Edited September 28, 2012 by SqueakyCat

[Luckmann]

I would prefer Goal-Based Experience, and a level-less system where you spend experience on advances, rather than to arbitrarily "level up" and gain a bunch of stuff, especially hitpoints (if hitpoints were to be relatively static throughout the game, I would be very happy).

[NerdBoner]

Of course you could also just choose not to have trash mobs. I'd be surprised if even Obsidian knows such specifics at this point.

I'd so prefer it if they were actually 2-3 months from launch and this Kickstarter stuff was just so the dev team can treat themselves to a truckload of cocaine and call girls.