[RPG] XP & money awards

[Zappo]

So here we are, with a Fluffy Pink Bunny which gives 5 gold and a much tougher skeleton which gives zilch. And both give the same XP.

I reckon that, before this game is called done, something must be done here. However, balancing the rewards is a very tough job. Even assuming that some way is coded to scale XP to level, how do you determine a creature's level? That's very, very hard because while creatures don't have equipment, PCs do and it may vary wildly from a PC to the next, even if they are of the same level.

And then there's money. Every change there, even to a single creature, can mess up the whole balance; one overpaid monster can lead to ultra-rich characters overnight. We could again scale this with the monster level, I guess.

I'd like to hear your ideas on the topic.

 

[diaglo]

i don't care for levelling too fast. but then again i don't like it in face to face play either.

 

[Morrus]

This is what I've suggested to the designer. However, he's not very good at responding. The numbers may require some tweaking, but it's a start. Note that I refer to GP as Gil here - that's because that's what he calls money on his own board, and I'm trying to make it easy for him!

Experience should be commensurate to challenge. It's too easy for a level 20 player to fight a level 1 bot repeatedly and level up with no real risk to himself. I'd suggest two changes: a) only award experience for a victory; b) give experience depending on the level difference between the two combatants OR make the experience needed for the next level increase at each level, and have set experience awards for defeating opponents of certain levels. Basically, it needs to be necessary for people to seek out greater challenges to increase their level. A proposed system is the one used in D&D:

Level XP Required
1 100
2 300
3 600
4 1000
5 1500
6 2100
7 2800
8 3600
9 4500
10 5500
11 6600
12 7800
13 9100
etc.

Experience award for defeating a bot or player opponent is: opponent level * 10. So for each level, you need to defeat 10 opponents of your level - or more of lower levels, or less of higher levels (if you want to take that risk!). If team-ups are allowed, experience is divided amongst participating members.
To do this, there needs to be a systematic level system for bots, though - at present, you have to guess the level of a bot you create, and if you guess it wrong people will be getting too much or too little experience for the challenges they face.

Monetary reward for fighting a bot should also be systemised, based on its level. I'd suggest an amount equal to 1/10 of the experience value of that level bot. So a level 1 bot earns you 10 Gil, a level 5 bot earns you 150 Gil and a level 10 bot earns you 550 Gil. That reward should be made up of money AND items.

Note that at present there is a disparity between bots of a level and players of equal level, because the level system doesn't take into account the fact that players get equipment and bots don't. So my level 20 players are easily defeating level 40 bots. That can be rectified by giving bots equipment (and versimilitude is achieved by making the reward equipment the same as the equipment the bot is using - imagine how cool it will be to be fighting a bot with a really cool sword, knowing that if you defeat it, you get that sword!)

 

[Morrus]

Yeah, I'm seeing a LOT of fight between level 10+ characters and the level 0 bunny. It's been defeated over 500 times, and hasn't won a single fight.

 

[Zappo]

Interesting. Players have much more money than bots of their level, but players must heal. Finding the right cost for healing is going to be another problem I guess. Too high and players get frustrated, too low and they'll advance too easily because they have been able to spend more money in equipment than the bots.

 

[diaglo]

i've been using my money on healing mostly.

but i keep trying to fight things that are tough enough to give me damage.

the orc is still out of my league.

 

[Ao the Overkitty]

I've fought a bunny and a skeleton each once, mostly cause I wanted to fight them once. For the most part, I fight orcs and wraiths. I've found that I can almost break even with the wraith moneywise. It all gets sunk into healing (along with all of my posting cash). I've also found that there is almost no difference etween fighting the orc and the wraith for me. Well... the difference is I don't break even with the orc, since he gives less cash but hits just as hard. This leads me to monopolize the wraith when I'm around, pretty much.

The ogre looks good, I'm just not quite ready to take him on.

 

[blargney the second]

I recommend using your rage against the monster that's tougher than what you usually fight. You can get some good money that way.

-blarg

 

[Ao the Overkitty]

Good advice. I did that for a while against orcs when I was still fighting kobolds.

 

[Crothian]

that expereince system looks somehow familiar...