Game Mechanics: XP loss (update)

[Liberate My Madness]

Vitriol, you have very new and... extreme ideas, not necessarily bad, but not older xenimus.. I like the idea with the bags, but not with the % exp loss based on level, that's just ridiculous, I don't believe you would like it if you were on hunting and your power went out and you died and lost 25% of your exp at level 25.

You all should set up an official voting thread where you can get an accurate general consencus of the prospect players of this game (the members of the board) on key issues, you don't have to implement the most popular, as that isn't necessarily what you are trying to do. It's pretty much a given that everyone wants new content, items, and the coolest spells of xen, but they don't need to be held down by brutal consequences should they make a mistake or lagg.

[Vitriol]

well, my original motivation for such a punishing system of XP loss is to keep player levels low. I want level 16 to be high level again.

[Karl G.]

That would definitely keep player levels low, but it wouldn't make the game any more exciting. However, we might want to adopt a system in which one could add to a skill tree in order to "level up" certain spells, instead of actually leveling a character.

[Joe M.]

keep in mind that the only motivation to have "levels" in the first place was to simplify character advancement. If you punish players for dying simply in order to keep their level low, it's a self-defeating goal, because their characters will never advance, and they'll get very bored very quickly, and leave.

Karl: yes, that's good--but why keep levels low for no reason other than that they look low? If you want to split character advancement over several less-meaningful levels, that's a good idea--each time you level you get a certain number of "points," or somesuch, to distribute among skills, abilities, hp, mp, etc...that way, characters can advance more evenly, instead of great big jumps in power at some arbitrary xp value. And it would also dilute character power, which seems to be the idea here.

[David T.]

Hmmm... yes, I've read a few WoWish ideas here. Not that it's a bad thing, WoW is the most popular MMO of all time in terms of total subscriptions.

I'm going make an idea spin off of what Karl and Joe are saying.
Consider a system where you spend some points, maybe even experience value equivelants, to 'purchase' skills.

I don't remember the exact values from Xen, but I do remember that each class had a certain group of spells and abilities that they learned at different levels of progressment. Lets say we have a base set of spells that a class will learn at the next level. These are set, they will be learned by everyone of a class upon reaching the next level and cannot be purchased through experience. However, lets take this example:

Bob is a warlock that favors beam type attacks over poisons and multiple projectile attacks. So, we have I think it was level 12 you learned the first beam attack in original xen. Can't remember. At level 11 Bob would start learning how to use his beam as he chose. He would have points he would have saved up from previous levels and he starts to specialize into beam attacks. So at level 11 he starts specializing in beams and he gains access to the same attack he could gain at level 12. As he approaches level 12 his beam gets more and more powerful as he keeps specializing it. At level 12 when most people would have the regular beam, Bob's beam does anywhere from 5 to 10 percent more damage on average (this would be presuming he continued to specialize the ability as he progressed towards level 12).

Think about it as powering spells up, it wouldn't change the graphic or even the name but it would amplify the damage.

[Karl G.]

I like that idea

[Liberate My Madness]

Very good idea, it would allow for people to customize their character to their personal preference and just plain add some actual depth other than stat points to character customization.

[thadiusofx3]

So basically it's like leveling up your spells? The more you use them the more powerful they are.

[Liberate My Madness]

I gathered that it was more like adding points gathered throughout leveling to your spells to make the ones you like stronger.

[David T.]

Correct.

You would assume that the initial investment to specialize would be large whereas the increasing specialization would be of lower investment. You could even shoot this out further into an idea like a skill tree.

Note: Yoinking from AC2 and WoW because I like skill trees. Trees allow for more customization of abilities and therefore of characters.

Lets ponder the idea of a skill tree.

You start as a basic
[Class] - Whatever character class you chose
|_______________
|............................|
[Branch 1].........[Branch 2] - These are the abilities you could specialize in. Example: Mage-fire/ice, Warlock-poison/fire, fighter-offense/defense
|............................|
|............................|
|............................| - Other assorted abilities would be here
|............................|
[Final ability]..........[Final ability] - At the end of each tree would be a special ability of some renoun. By neglecting your other tree and forsaking balance you obtain the most powerful abilities of your tree.

You could also branch things off into more interesting ways.
Lets take for example a fighter because it will be basic.
A fighter's two trees could be offense and defence.
Offense could branch off into 2 handed weapons and 1 handed weapons with shield. Abilities would correspond to the use of the weapon type.
Defense is a little tricky to branch, it might just be more of a chain. Set yadayada points into defense to become an immovable, stalwart object.

You could not only include abilities which would be available only by specializing into trees, but you could also just simply choose to amplify the damage or effect on abilities also. In addition you could make abilities early to a person who chooses to specialize to get it as in the Bob the warlock example I gave earlier. Say you need some number of points in order to get to improved beam which would correspond with being level 11 whereas the beam is learned by all at level 12. By obtaining understanding of improved beam, he learns the ability early and begins to strengthen it immediately.