The mechanism of gaining experience points

Warhunter

I propose to give out experience not as a grind, but as achievements. Completed the achievement - gained experience. Gained experience - raised the level . Achievements of course have a price and the more of them the more interesting it is to play. At the same time, the issue of new content and the end of the game is automatically removed. I am sure this approach to character growth radically changes the quality of gameplay, increasing it at times

Bradyfjord

Deferred gratification is not a bad thing, but to make something as intrinsic as gaining experience a delayed thing would be unwise. The best way I've ever seen this done is in an old MUDD called Dragonrealms. In that game, you could advance your skills independently of your level. To gain a level you would have to find a class trainer and ask them to teach you the next level, but the class trainer would only raise your level if you had worked your skills high enough for the level.

TLDR: Not a good idea, but not the worst I've ever heard of.

virtus753

This is a much different question than it would have been for the rest of the history of the game in light of account-wide achievements having been implemented with the current patch.

Either we'd have to apply any account-wide achievements that have been earned toward the XP of new characters, in which case those characters would stand to get the vast majority of their experience immediately upon creation, or we wouldn't be able to do that at all, in which case any alt character couldn't make much progress, since they'd have no way to get at the XP behind the account-wide achievements that had already been earned.

I don't really see how to get around those alternatives. The first would seem to make the alt leveling process (even more) trivial; the second would render it practically impossible for many.

Lysette

I'm against this - I have experienced that in MUDs a long time ago and I never got far in those having this kind of system, because I'm a "play as you like" player, who doesn't do what he/she is supposed to do - to me an ongoing XP gain is much better than just getting XP for accomplishing an achievement, which my characters might not want to accomplish at all.

If it is bound to achievements this means that there is a direction I have to take - and that is not "play as you like", that gets it into a linear guided direction and that is not the kind of game I want to play. With exceptions, like Dishonored, where I accepted that, because I had many different options to accomplish the goal - otherwise I like games which basically say "here is the world, have fun" - and I can do as I please in it and achieve whatever I want to achieve and not something given. I do as well not like questing - due to that I have to do things in a given order to complete it - I really dislike that, I need freedom.

I can understand that some players like structure and being told what to do next - I'm none of those, to me EVE for example was ideal, because it had no goals, it basically gave me my noob ship and then pushed me out into the universe. Ok, there were career agents to help along - I did one of those, considered that too much of a chore and just ventured out into the universe and found my own path - I didn't want a freaking given career path, my personal goal was making a fortune and it made me a trillionaire, doing it my way, with no guidance of any kind, figuring it out myself over time - this is the kind of game play I enjoy, but not forced or guided play.

Paulytnz

There is nothing wrong with how we level up/gain exp in this game. Think yourself lucky that's not like the old school Runsecape where you literally had to grind it by killing monsters. That's it, nothing from quests/etc.

Here you just spam quests - walk in the park. Yes some people do the dolman grind which seems pointless to me since you have to then go and farm sky shards anyway. So all that exp of discovering places/killing mobs on the way to said sky shards is going to waste.

Yes you can grind mobs here too, but I think the only people that would do that would be the ones that enjoy it, and not the ones coming to the forums to moan about it lol.

Treeshka

I think the current levelling system is really fitting to this game. There is literally nothing needed to be changed in my opinion.

Kisakee

With account wide achievements your new characters would be at max level from the getgo anyway.

Kiralyn2000

"Milestone" leveling systems can work (Chrono Cross did it, and it's somewhat common in tabletop RPGs), but I don't really see it working in "we'd like you to play infinitely" games like MMOs and Live Service. People like to feel like they're constantly progressing or gaining something, and if you don't do anything to get the next "Achievement", they you'll never get anywhere.

(personally, I don't bother to pursue Achievements in this game. I've no interest in many of the activities that have a good portion of the achieves attached to them - I don't do dungeons, or hardmodes, or anything like that.)

Warhunter wrote: »

Achievements of course have a price and the more of them the more interesting it is to play.

See, I disagree with that. As I said, I'm not an achievement hunter.

Lysette

A lot of what I do gains very little XP - what doesn't bother me at all as long as I enjoy what I'm doing. I have a lot of fun to study the different environments looking for interesting details and "hidden gems" like side stories resp. glimpses of what could be a story - like NPCs talking about something and in my mind forms a story about what they are talking about - those might be just a few lines I catch from them - but then my mind starts to think about it and constructs a story, which matches what I heard. Like a couple sitting on a park bench, talking like lovers, but then I get that they consider where and how to get rid of her husband - oh, they plan to murder him - such little gems I collect and there are no XP attached to them.

There are sometimes lines spoken by NPCs, where I think that the designer of it has eternalized own experience in them, like being caught in a dull marriage with no reasonable way out eternally being nagged by his wife - there are so many of these in the game, that I think someone just wanted to drop his frustration about it somewhere and it ended up in the game. Or this woman in Stros M'kai who urges for a ship coming which could get her off the island and her hubby is trying to calm her down, because he doesn't want to leave the island - but she has enough she wants to leave - there is no XP in that, but I like it.

That is as well why I talk to NPCs which aren't really story relevant - they have often lines, which make me think about them. I appreciate that effort went into that - as well talking to all the traders on roads, some have lines which really make me think for long about it. I still remember Megaton in Fallout 3 - there were a bunch of hidden stories in that town - like those in the brass lantern, officially all working out well there, but the relationship there was set up to fail, cheating going on, another one dealing drugs, likely stolen from the physician in Megaton. I like these little details which most might not even get aware of.

kringled_1

virtus753 wrote: »

This is a much different question than it would have been for the rest of the history of the game in light of account-wide achievements having been implemented with the current patch.

Either we'd have to apply any account-wide achievements that have been earned toward the XP of new characters, in which case those characters would stand to get the vast majority of their experience immediately upon creation, or we wouldn't be able to do that at all, in which case any alt character couldn't make much progress, since they'd have no way to get at the XP behind the account-wide achievements that had already been earned.

I don't really see how to get around those alternatives. The first would seem to make the alt leveling process (even more) trivial; the second would render it practically impossible for many.

It's also intrinsically limited. There are a finite number of achievements in the game.
OP's idea just seems incredibly flawed from multiple aspects.

Arunei

Paulytnz wrote: »

There is nothing wrong with how we level up/gain exp in this game. Think yourself lucky that's not like the old school Runsecape where you literally had to grind it by killing monsters. That's it, nothing from quests/etc.

Here you just spam quests - walk in the park. Yes some people do the dolman grind which seems pointless to me since you have to then go and farm sky shards anyway. So all that exp of discovering places/killing mobs on the way to said sky shards is going to waste.

Yes you can grind mobs here too, but I think the only people that would do that would be the ones that enjoy it, and not the ones coming to the forums to moan about it lol.

The experience gain from discovering locations (in this case unlocking Wayshrines) is so small as to be negligible. Many of them you don't need to fight much, if anything, to get to (there are delves, yes, but even then a lot of them don't have too many enemies that need to be killed). Besides, that exp doesn't go to waste either way; it either goes towards the individual character's levels, or it goes to account-shared CP

As for the OP itself, no. I don't chase achievements unless they have a Dye or some other reward I want, and even then the achievement has to be something I can do. I already dislike leveling as it is, locking exp behind achievements would make it even more of a slog than it is (to me) already.

Sylvermynx

Never have been an achievement chaser so this wouldn't appeal to me at all. It's already annoying enough that the biggest hunks of XP happen when you kill bosses in quests instead of getting it for each quest stage - I really hate having to kill stuff for XP.

TrellyTB

Kisakee wrote: »

With account wide achievements your new characters would be at max level from the getgo anyway.

Yes, either they would implement it that all characters immediately get all achievements of experience, or only as the achievement occurs. So either all characters would max out, or remain mostly at level 1.

That, plus I don't care about achievements, except that the game has various rules about when a mob has been beaten. So, public dungeon bosses give achievements to each character, but delve bosses do not (as I understand it works now) ... and we want to make some sort of leveling happen?