Comparing RPG's

Alright, time to start a new post.

In this post I'll hopefully figure some stuff out about RPG's. Just a note, I generally play fantasy RPG's, so that's pretty much the only kind I'll be talking about.

One thing that seems to be consistent through all RPG's is levels. Once you have achieved a set requirement, you level up. This generally increases some or all of your statistics and gives you a power boost. The most common way of levelling up is by gaining experience points, also know as EXP or XP.

EXP is a great way to level up. It's straightforward, when you get the amount on your stat screen, you level up. The method of gaining EXP is also pretty simple, you defeat enemy X and you get Y amounts of EXP, or you could be given a set amount of EXP when you finish a quest, when you create a magic item, when you solve a puzzle, or when you discover a new area. It's a simple, easy to understand and easy to use.

Now the problem with this is that having a set amount of EXP given for defeating an enemy is that once you level up, the enemy stays at the same, making it easier for you to kill it with the same EXP gain. Which means players won't seek out harder enemies, they'll just keep killing the same ones over and over to level up. There are three fixes that come to mind when I think of this problem

1. Make the enemies more powerful as you become more powerful.

2. Increase the amount of EXP needed for the next level.

3. Decrease the EXP given as you become more powerful.

1. This doesn't seem such a bad idea, until you think about it a bit harder. Let's say there's a forest full of wolves. At level 1 you can kill it, it hurts you quite a bit, but you kill it. Now let's say you've gone to the next village and came back at level 10. You run into another of these wolves and it attacks you. You walk away from the fight the same way as before, alive, but quite hurt. Now you're coming back from saving world from a horde of demons, you've levelled up hundreds of times, you have the ultimate weapon of good and you run into another of these wolves. It attacks you and once again and you end up the same. Why, if only you had a few of these wolves to fight for you, the demonic horde wouldn't have stood a chance. Another problem is if these wolves can attack the local populace, the simple peasants wouldn't stand a chance.

2. This makes much more sense. You could kill 20 wolves to gain a level, or 3 demons. I don't think it requires much more explanation.

3. This also makes more sense, as you level, you need more powerful enemies to get enough EXP to level up. In some games, it's impossible to get any EXP from enemies that are too low a level.

So, my verdict is 2,3 or a combination of both. 1 can work, but I think it spoils the experience of an RPG a little.

Now that's just experience points. There are other ways to level up, depending on your game. I'd like to bring your attention to Oblivion at this point. Its method of level up is a little different. There is a big list of skills that your character can have, Alchemy, Hand-to-Hand, Sneak and Mercantile, to name a few. During the tutorial, you pick 7 skills to be your "Major Skills". As you play through the game, you level up your skills once you've levelled up your Major Skills a total of 10 times (6 levels of Alchemy and 4 of Sneak, for example) you level up the next time your character sleeps. It's a pretty nifty system, unfortunately, many of the enemies in the game are scaled in power like in point one. The problem with this is that if you don't level up your major skills that are combat based, you start to lose fights. This is because they are scaled according to you level, if you're level 10, so are they. This can make it almost impossible to do some quests unless you level with combat in mind. The game is still fun though, I'm just having a little bit of a whine about a part of it I don't like.

Yeah, so back to the point about levels. Actually, no. I'm going to talk about classes.

Classes help in the process of levelling. At level 13 a warrior would have different skills and abilities compared to a level 13 wizard. A problem with classes is that they are very linear, with little room for variation. At the core at least. A player wants their level 13 warrior to be different from their friend's level 13 warrior. So you throw in some kind of variation, maybe let them choose between two different abilities when they level up? Give them other things to define their character. Let them make armour, or swords, but not both.

Then you get the other end of the spectrum where there are no classes, you just have abilities to purchase or skills to level up.

So, once again I'm losing inspiration. I'll end here before I start repeating myself or having two word paragraphs. Hopefully this is enough to make it look like I thought about this post before I started.

-Shadowfred