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Besides a grinding MMORPG, what else could we add to get more EXP?
southerngunz
Member Posts: 9
Are you tired of playing MMO'S where you just stand in one spot for hours trying to get the big drop, and kill lots of mobs at the same time for alot of EXP? What can we do besides quests, and grinding for more exp points?
That question has boggled my mind for a while. I don't know of any other way to get more experience points besides grinding, partying, and quests. What about another feature? Are there any games that have that extra feature, that I wish I knew what I was talking about? What would that extra feature be to get exp points? Maybe an MMORPG with a type of Perks system. But what kind of perks would we add?
Comments
Experience (exp, XP) is a holdover concept from D&D. It actually doesn't make much sense to use XP in an MMO.
Why did they use it in D&D? Because characters are assumed to be practicing their skills whenever the PC isn't directly controlling them. That is, a fighter trains and practices with weapons, a mage researches some new spell or other. That is my understanding. Once you accumulate enough XP, you then retroactively decide what your character was doing in that time.
MMOs are different. Your character does not exist when not being controlled. There is no need to use XP. Instead, as in real life, all you need is skills which raise slowly through use.
Apart from just removing Exp altogether?
If you can make crafting a good profession (read: larger shards with higher population + full corpse looting which results in a constant demand of player crafted armor7weapons etc), then getting xp for crafting things would be a good idea in my eyes. So the full time merchant and crafter can have his fun without ever touching a mob.
Well, you could get experience from killing other players, but I think that idea's already been done before
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K9 has the idea many yearn for. Skil based systems. You dont gain "levels" and all of a sudden acquire a new set of abilities after performing the same task over and over again do you?
So instead you swing your sword in combat and your skill increases. Perhaps milestones can be set where you learn new techniques after a certain number of successful strikes. How to prevent mindless practicing on weaker mobs? You kill them faster so skill ups are less likely to happen if you are grinding easy monsters.
Monster drops is another easy way to acquire abilities. EQ2 has Lore and legend quests where players need to acquire monster parts in essence "learn" about the monster and gain a new skill (master strike) regarding the monster. A clever developer could tie in abilities to monsters killed/ found/ parley etc. and the reward be a new skill.
An innovative programer / developer team might even make battle techniques players use become skills. Suppose you want to attract one monster from a group. Most MMOs today give the player a taunt skill or feign death or crowd control ability. What if a ability is unlocked by a player a) sneaks up undetected does an emote like (/whisper %T) or similar emote that makes a sound. The monsters position turns in your direction. The ability reward is unlocked if the players does an emote (/taunt).
Congrats you gain the taunt skill!
Another example could be a spellcaster spots a target and launches a spell he learned at school. Something strange happens when the mob is coming, he trips! An astute caster finishes the battle an inspects the area where he tripped and finds out there is a strange weed that may be useful. After investigation the caster learns how to snare or root his opponents!
Well the XP system is merely a game mechanic to measure how the character has progressed. Hell roleplaying games DID NOT start from D&D in fact people way back to the 19th century have already a primitive form of roleplaying via telling stories and asking the audience on what would they do on the situation. Think of the XP system as a guide rule for the storyteller (DM) and the audience (Players) on how far they have progressed in a story.
The xp system is very old and have little use in modern MMOs of today. Still develope insist of using it on every *%¤#ing game.
Maybe soon they will realise that now is the future.
This is like saying the wheel was invented by cavemen during the 4th millenium B.C. yet we're still using it today.
I actually loved SWG skill system.
It could have used some refining but the concept was solid. It was based on, what you do, is what you get.
An MMO... I think an MMO where you start pretty maxed out in stats and can simply upgrade by doing some quests or getting a certain amount prestige. (right now.. that looks like grinding lol)
I don't see why you always start as a weakling in every single MMO.
Only game where you started pretty solid was Planet side.... finish the training and you had the basic gear that seriously was good enough for anythhing. Even at BR20, I was still using some of the default assault guns and such lol
You're talking about character progression, it is pretty much the core of MMORPG's mechanics. Well they COULD start you off as a max level character with all the best loot in the game but then you'd probably get bored VERY FAST.
SWG has a lot of grinding except they hidden the XP bar but you still grind. Even UO the grand daddy of the skill based system has a grind (that's why back in the hey days people use macroing software like UOExtreme/UOMacro and UOLoop to cut back on grinding the skills). Hell even Asheron's Call has grinding thus the invention of the Decals. In every single MMORPG ever created there is grind, it's the heart of an MMORPG character progression process.
The trick here is not to remove the grind but to hide it and make the game interesting enough that the player won't notice the grind and become bored.
Planetside is NOT an RPG, it's an MMOFPS, you don't need to grind while paying Counterstrike do you? Altho it still has grind altho in a passive way by gaining ranks you gain access to better stuff.
i woud have to agree, the XP system died along time ago, but this is the problem game developers have.. " we want people to play for hours and hours to level up, but how?? oh i know how bout making them gring for a couple hours!! yes thats a good idea " trust me some people have the same ideas no matter where they r at...
kill, kill , kill some more, go to sleep, wake up, rinse, lather repeat
If you want to tacklethis problem you need to tackle the problem of people who rush everything and use guides and ever edge playing in the same world as people who do not.
Grinds are hard barriers that force even the most short cut oriented person to obey the pacing of the game.
In a game like oblivion or whatever you can do the game in 1/5 the time by following a walkthrough.
This is most evident in a game like DDO. Each quest is a custom instance, but as DDO stands now you often wind up with at least half a group having done the instance multiple times. So the people who want to take their time and enjoy it are often put with people who are going at literally 4 times their pace and know all the tricks.
I am not complaining about this like some have on the DDO boards. But think of the larger consequences of this. Because these games are SOCIAL, once the secret is out its out. The normal mechanics of discovery are vastly compromised.
The pacing of MMOs eventually all breaks down to a game where everyone plays with a walkthrough. And they follow the same trends. People used to grind out random chest loot in CRPGs from Wizardry/BArd's tale whatever all the up to current day games like NWN.
Basically grind is something that has been around since the beginning because in the when the game transitions from new fun to getting stuff there is no other way for the devs to control you, to pace the experience in an reliable manner.
And because once you know it all getting it on the second go around rarely feels like an accomplishment with a guaranteed drop since MMORPG encounters are formulaic. The first try might have involved a lot of work but the second is often ten times faster and formulaic.
You don't HAVE to have one or the other: a skill based advancement system vs. experience/level system
I've always thought a cool idea would be to have a skill based progression system (i.e. you swing a sword you gain points for your sword skill ala UO) but also have an experience/level system.
You'd get experience from kills in PvE/PvP + questing, but also get XP towards leveling your toon from crafting, exploration, etc. All on the same XP scale, no crafting xp vs. combat xp. but just one general pool of xp.
Your skill with a weapon/school of magic/crafting etc. would determine your effectiveness with it and unlock new abilities/spells/recipes...
but your xp based Level would be where you'd get your "talent points" or whatever other type of system you want to use for the advancing your character.
This way you could do whatever activities you wanted, be it questing or grinding or PvP or crafting or exploration or some combination of all of them etc. and still be able to "level" your character, but your characters strength/skills wouldn't be determined by this level, but instead by the practice/use of those skills.
This is a monumentally bad idea that can be abused. I will just make TWO char, find a remote/safe place, and have them take turns killing one another.
This is NOT a new idea. EQ has it back in 1999. WOW also has it. (Remember you need that 1H sword skill to use your sword?)
However, the skills are largely ignored and has little effect on the game.
Exactly. Make it no longer largely ignored.
It's more like Oblivion then anything I think... but Oblivion you "leveled up" once you advanced your skills enough through use (if I remember correctly)
I'd make them nearly completely seperate.
Create a solo storyline for each class and use alot of scripting and instancing.
Create another one for groups and separate it into chapters, a new chapter every 5-10 levels.
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I will not add into the xp vs skill system for now (has all been said).
Other ways to get XP:
- Exploration: get to certain points of interest (hard to get to)
- Challenges: Fight different strong monsters in a level system. With stronger I mean more intelligent. The player has to come up with totally new strategies that are hard to implement.
- Non Grind achievements: Kill 5 players, kill 5 toads, etc...
- Gain XP in non combat situations: solving riddles, solving npc crimes, crafting, trading etc.
- PvP (hard to balance)
Overall a player should simply play the game, have lots and lots of stuff to do. If he manages to do most of the stuff (non-repetative, with lots of non combat stuff) he should be near top level.
Killing NPCs gazillion times should not mean that you are worthy of being top level. A top level player should have been around in the world, should be a good fighter, intelligent player, experienced in travel and trade alike and should be superior in knowledge to low levels. Right now a high level player (in WoW) could be anything from a scripted bot to a monkey on energy drinks. I still wonder why those high levs are proud of being something any 10 year old 50 iq player could achieve. Damn, I somehow ended in a rant. Sorry for that.
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Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
ill agree with u however this is not a rant. u actually make sence but lets face it, game programmers usually arent gamers believe it or not.
kill, kill , kill some more, go to sleep, wake up, rinse, lather repeat
I thought E&B had the right idea with it's 3 different experience levels. You had a combat level which went from 1 to 50, an exploration level which went from 1-50 and a trade level which went from 1-50, giving you an overall max level of 150 if all three were maxed out. You could get experience in each category thru various things. Obviously blowing stuff up gave you combat exp. Finding new places on the map gave you exploration exp and selling stuff to NPC's gave you trade exp. Crafting new items gave you exploration exp and trade exp. You could get any type of exp for quests depending on the type of quest. You could even do trade missions that basically were nothing more than buying goods in one place where the price was low, taking them to a place where the prices were high and selling them. Rinse and repeat. They were boring as hell, but you made some cash and exp at the same time. There needed to be more and better ways to make trade and exploration experience, but the concept was a good one. This way you could get to level 100 without doing any combat at all and just being a trader/crafter. The combat only guy could only get to level 50 doing nothing but combat, he had to branch out and try other stuff to get above level 50.
Another reason why this was a great system was because most of the time you would be getting exp in all 3 categories at once. Go and hunt and gain some combat exp. Then come back and sell the loot for some trade exp. Then make some ammo or upgrade your weapons or something and then head off to a new zone to get some exploration exp. The nice thing about this system is that all 3 levels are increasing at the same time. There was almost always at least 1 category that you were getting close to leveling up, so you could kinda focus on that category for awhile and level it up. It didn't seem like such a grind because there wasn't one big exp bar you had to fill, it was broken up into 3 smaller bars.
I really thought this was a great system and would like to see it utilitzed in another MMO.
Any action possible would become a grind if done more than a couple times.
Yeah killing things over and over is really annoying, and options like exploration, puzzles, crafting and what have you do help, but given a long enough time you repeat all actions to the point where they become a grind.
Make a 15 minute long game that is a series of senarios, none of them repeat and once you finishe them all you never play the game again, no ability to repeat an action again, no grind. It is like Warioware with no replayability.
Don't you worry little buddy. You're dealing with a man of honor. However, honor requires a higher percentage of profit
good analogy
kill, kill , kill some more, go to sleep, wake up, rinse, lather repeat
remove lvls and exp replace with building up your character with skills like in morrowind and get better equippement by crafting or read books so you learn better skills magic.
Grow by roleplaying live the gameworld get knowledge so many other ways to go around lvls and xp.
But aventurine is developing that in game called DARKFALL:)
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A lot of people seem to be mentioning TES series,
Was I the only one that found having to hit things repeatedly or use skills repeatedly to level them up annoying and not fun.
To me it is practically the same as getting xp but for one skill at a time, it is just reshaping the grind.
I couldn't enjoy that game without cheating and making my character max in all the skills I wanted, so I didn't have to worry about leveling them.
Although the game levels with you, you can still gimp your character, there is a very counter-intuitive formula to leveling properly.
I really don't like levels, but skills are no improvement, you may have more options but you still have to grind to get them.
Oh well I have just kind of given up on all games in general
Don't you worry little buddy. You're dealing with a man of honor. However, honor requires a higher percentage of profit
The question is "what sort of experience system is best". A good game will work with most any experience system. Pen and paper players didn't care much what level they were, they didn't grind, the gm was good enough to make all levels fun, it didn't get more fun as the game went on, it was equally fun amongst all levels.
Think of it like playing quake. Would anyone cheat to get to the last boss and then throw the game away after 10 minutes of play? No. You'd be missing out on all the fun. Its the whole journey of getting to the end that you are playing for. The boss is just the feel good moment of triumph at the end, the sizzle of the steak.
The gamers of today somehow have lost their way and think that the point of these games is to get to max level (or max skill). And thats what has to be fixed. A game should be equally fun at 1 as at 50. A game should entice you to play 1-50 because buying a maxxed character will make you miss out on all the fun.
The point of play should be to have fun, not to get to some max level. You shouldn't care what level (or skill) you are at.
Sadly, games aren't good enough to achieve this .... yet.
I agree with you Cactusman. That's why I like skill training based on time. It sucks if you're impatient but otherwise you just set a skill to train and play the game. It also helps to prevent the rush to be the 'highest level' as everyone basically gains sp at the same rate