Experience System Suggestion

[Solemn]

Howdy, Solemn here again! (Tired of me on the forums yet?)

I was thinking as yet again one of my characters got the sickening 'Possible-' before the experience and gold, that if you looked at this in a logical perspective, I understand not gaining experience when you're laying on the ground unconscious, but did you fail to gain experience while you were alive in the battle?

It's in my opinion, that if the "possible" experience were divided into the total amount of rounds you were alive in the battle, say my fighter was alive for 8 rounds out of a 16 round dragon fight for 38,000 "possible" experience. Well he GOT experience in battle for half the battle. Let's give him 19,000 Experience.

Then at the end of the battle, it can read..

Acquired 19,000/38,000 Exp
Acquired 0/310 Gold

I understand the gold not getting your share, cause honestly, allies or not, who's giving the unconscious guy some loot? Hell I'd be surprised if my allies didn't steal some of my money while I was laying there.

The exception to my idea is boss battles, like now dead or alive you should get the full experience. But one interesting idea to this would be death, you could award experience for deaths so long as they killed at least one of the chaotics. But once again, the exception is bosses, can't have someone killing endless Troll bastards at Kaug and dying to receive enough experience to be 60 obviously.

Well, seeing as how the suggestions forum is basically for everyone to analyze and point out flaws or possible additions, let the criticism begin! -waves the flag to start the race-

[Soren]

Huh.. That'd certainly be a new twist. And it'd pretty much make those uber-long ambushes where you're face down on the floor the majority of the battle while your allies kick ass not a COMPLETE waste of time.. It's interesting, but I dunno what to make of it.

I see your point, and the "possible" could very well still stand for instances you're completely wiped off the screen. Like Rub.

[U. Dye]

Or, rather than dividing up the EXP based on how many rounds you're active, you could track how many chaotics are killed while you're alive, and just gain EXP for those.

[Kija]

Several different methods have been considered and suggested in the past. I do want to eventually remove the problem of gaining no experience. It will happen sometime. Maybe with the new battle engine.

[Sur Realis]

But then what of all the enemies that are widdled down low on health and then the weaker but faster person kills it? Personally, I think the EXP could be divided based on participation rather than overall use in battle - each time you are set to automatically Defend + Rest you take an EXP penalty. For example, my Thief tends to be useless after all the small enemies have been killed, (300ish per backstab on a Fire Dragon? Eh, I'll just let everyone else handle it) so I just Defend + Rest for the last portion.

Then there's also the problem of an unfortunate faceplant early in the battle and it's too intense to be lifed. I don't think it's fair for a character that is usually actually fairly active in battle to get absolutely nothing because Lady Luck's on her period.

Instead, perhaps a mix of what I said above, based on whether or not you are doing something rather than idling in battle, and the Level gap of the characters. For example, if LP were to PS train people in Skyre. Two Level 49s partied with Levels 18-28. The Level 18s would recieve 36% of the EXP they would normally gain, and the Level 28s would recieve 57%. (If you can't tell, 28/49 = .57) Say a Level 28 automatically defended 3 turns in a row (like it would happen with LP in the party, but yeah.) They would have a 9% penalty loss (3 turns squared), thus he/she getting only 48% of the normal EXP. All persons within 5 levels of the highest leveled would get no penalties.

Such a battle system would encourage patience between party members and less idling for lulz free expz, and more partying with people closer to your level.

[Jumin]

all of that can be remedied by not being under leveled and a good build.

and... just don't party with LP's alts in ruoze if u want more exp.

[Takahashi]

There's also the problem where a 'Defend/Rest = -XP' system penalizes melee characters. Melees shouldn't be more or less forced to hold off on using MP unless it is absolutely necessary while a mage can go haywire. After all, melees don't have abilities like Meditate or Osmose available in order to restore their MP, so their options in long fights are rather limited.

Also, harvesting becomes a bit of a hassle when the primary method of contributing to the process for half of the classes in the game (Fighter, Knight, Dragoon, Thief, Black Belt) would result in losing XP.

[Sur Realis]

I didn't mean the Defending and Resting option makes you lose EXP. What I was saying was when the timer goes off and people automatically defend and rest they lose XP.

[Solemn]

You learn from observation as well as action, but I do agree with the monsters killed thus far in battle possibility.

But participation in battle is a bit much, the entire idea is so that if you die at the very end of the battle you don't have to bite the bullet and just sigh.

But I know for fact that you learn from viewing others, all do. If you were to incorporate the participation factor, you'd have to alter is so that it varies based on level of the monsters. If you're equal level maybe 10% of inactive experience, increasing 10 percent for every level below the monsters level and every level past the level you drop 1 percent off of the base 10 for equal level.

[Sur Realis]

But if you are set to automatically defend and rest, you technically aren't observing nor participating (which observing falls under participation), because the timer is made for when people go AFK in battle.

[Solemn]

Lol, but sometimes you'll miss your attack while you're doublekeying, it'd be harsh to make someone penalized for it. But I see your point still.

[Takahashi]

Well, given the clarifications...

Some people also stick to short round timers, so if you encounter a pocket of lag you might as well wave goodbye to part of your XP unless you've learned how to blindly enter specific attack patterns via the keyboard or just hold your Enter key (have fun if you're using more than one key at a time). Plus, the approach of 'you lose XP if you defend/rest due to inactivity' doesn't serve that different of a purpose than harvesting. With one you're not taking a meaningful action because you're idle, and with the other you're intentionally avoiding meaningful action so that someone who went balls out with their MP can get back up to speed.

The end result is the same, in other words; extra rounds are spent (more so with harvesting than idling) due to someone using their round in a wasteful way. Idlers tend to end up doing a D/R when they're already at full HP and MP because they're idle, and harvesters tend to Meditate or D/R on purpose because someone else isn't done regaining their lost HP and MP yet. Accidental XP loss because someone is busy typing out a message on worldsay/say/tell doesn't sound fair, especially when there will be situations when someone can purposefully engage in the same behavior that results in lost XP for an idler.

Given the two main ideas presented so far, I'd favor XP being rewarded based on participation, regardless of type. D/Ring while at full HP and MP would result in a penalty. This would eventually deal with idlers who just wander off while in a party and expect to get full XP; they'd lose XP for not attacking anything and for not casting buffs, debuffs or healing magic, as well as losing XP for the eventual (and repeated) defending/resting at full HP/MP. Harvesters would be encouraged to do something other than sit around with a thumb up their defending/resting/meditating butts while they wait for Wonder Mage the Spammer to get from zero MP to full (i.e., Harvesting is a mildly stupid tactic that should be filtered out by way of bringing back magic potions for use outside of battle).

[Sur Realis]

I didn't really explain my thoughts behind the idling EXP loss part, but the way I thought it up gives leeway for the times someone accidentally misses a turn. The way I thought it up, it takes the number of turns you miss, and splits it in multiples of fives. If you miss six turns, that's a five and a one. If you miss eleven that is a five, a five, and a one. It Squares all the numbers and adds them up. The EXP Loss table would look like this then:

1 - 1%
2 - 4%
3 - 9%
4 - 16%
5 - 25%
6 - 26%
7 - 29%
8 - 34%
9 - 41%
10 - 50%

And so on until 20 turns idled, which results in a full EXP loss. With such a system, even if you accidentally miss a turn, you'll only lose 1 exp per 100 exp, which in retrospect is not much.

[Solemn]

I disagree with the anti-harvesting problem.

Ideally with this system, while you are alive the damage done to chaotics is recorded temporarily, if you're alive for 1400/5600, then you get 1/4th the experience. It's a damn tricky system though. But as much as I'd like to see this system implemented, it would be a real hard system to code, so I don't see it coming in. Kija's teh awesome coder, but with all the upgrades already in store, it's interesting none the less. If I knew how they handled levels, I'd work on it myself, if for nothing else than a project to work on to educate myself in coding more.

[Rand]

I do NOT agree with having MP potions back in the game. We may as well get rid of the Rest command if we're going to do that, and thus revert part of our system back to Version 4 essentially. Harvesting may be cheap, but so is being a potionholic after every fight

[Solemn]

Go Rand! Damn I'm sleepy. But yeah, harvesting while it may not be that all fired perfect. is strategy and is free. In a game in which money is as a pain to get as experience, I don't see ANY reasons to force people to require the use of potions so that they don't have a 5 minute wait between battles to get just their HP back. Let alone their MP, hell I've rested with hardly any MP before, and went and made something for lunch. STILL wasn't full MP.