Experience Points Forum

Experience points in my opinion has always been a very artificial system within RPGs especially when used in a leveling system. How is it that a character can suddenly jump in power after defeating a certain amount of enemies? Skills are learned over time and muscle memory may take even longer so there is no grounding for this in reality. This is less artificial when a human game master determines the amount of experience gained and what action or achievement awards those experience points, but thus far CRPGs are not doing the best job at that. Yes it is true that experience levels work as a game dynamic as is evident with the millions of people playing WoW, but there must a more natural way that still maintains a good game dynamic and reward system. Thus I would like some suggestion on this and examples from games that do this well because I'm planning to start developing my own little RPG soon.

Well lots of games have adapted more realistic experience models, such as the elder scrolls games in my opinion

Grinding sucks but if they maded leveling up so easy, it wouldnt be fun (GW)

EX points are not bad

Even though Fallout(1 and 2) does have levels and experience points, the attribute selection is like you said, you choose your attributes at the beginning of the game, and you have them until the end.  Everything is scaled 1-10, 1 being horrible and crippling, 10 being amazing, default is 5.

But those crazy systems of the Final Fantasy games add to the fun in my opinion because they work as game dynamics. Thus the dilemma remains. Is it better to have something more natural that may be more immersive or should games favor experience systems that have better game play possibilities or are more addictive?

HERE'S AN IDEA: Literally gaining expirience in a game.

Most fighting games or sports games give you everything on day one. Like in Soul Calibur, Tekken or Street Fighter- They cut out the points all together and just give the player access to all the moves from the beginning. Then it's up to the player to learn them all by playing alot and getting some expirience with the game. So instead of artificially giving you a level number, you genuinely get better at it the more you play.

So I think the alternative to Experience Points has allways been around if you look outside of Japanese fantasy role-playin-games. It's the art of making a game "easy to learn, difficult to master", and you don't level grinding for that.