[Trevalen]

Allow me explain an experience system concept that was considered and rejected during the design phase for my game, to see if anyone has come up with a creative solution to the problem I experienced.

The system was a sort of hybrid of flat exp and skill system that worked thusly: by killing monsters or completing quests, experience points were earned. Experience points could be spent by the player to purchase levels in skills such as heavy armor, slashing weapons, pyromancy, stealth, and the like. Each player is a member of a guild (such as mages guild), which has certain requirements to advance through the ranks and gain acccess to new abilities. For example, perhaps a mage needs five levels of pyromancy per guild rank, but only one of armor, whereas a knight would focus on armor and weapons, etc. Requirements for each level within the guilds are balanced so that to buy the necessary skills to earn a level requires the same amount of experience for members of each guild, and results in similar "power" within the game.

The dilemma came about when applying this system to our design goal of exponential growth. The idea is that player power should advance exponentially rather than linearly over time. Therefore players (for example) should not gain 5 hit points per level, but rather 5%. This is in order to create an environment where X units of time will produce the same feeling of advancement for all players. (In a linear system, you might start at level 1 with 5 HP, and gaining 5 would you level would double your HP -- a huge power increase. When moving from 50 HP to 55HP, however, it's only a 10% increase, which is less noticeable. Eventuially this results in power increases which are inobservable at the top end and results in high level players quitting due to ennui.)

So, we determined that skills should follow this principle of exponential power growth. However to create exponential growth in power with a skill system requires one of two things:

A) The power and cost of each skill rank increase exponentially.
B) The number of skill ranks required per guild level increase exponentially.

You must have either bigger skill ranks or more skill ranks in order to achieve exponential growth.

A) is undesirable because ranks lose meaning because they are of different sizes. This is clumsy and unintuitve. Additionally, the experience costs of each rank have to increase exponentially, meaning the number of experience points each rank costs will soon reach absurd levels and fill the game with huge and ugly numbers.

B) is undesirable for similar reasons. For example, the number of ranks needed per level scales up quickly, and soon players are having to allocate ranks many many times each level. Buying skill ranks goes from being an interesting intermediate reward to being an obnoxious hassle.

Has anyone seen any games with a skill system like this that include exponential growth? How are other administrators dealing with the scaling issues caused by exponential growth? Hiding numbers behind flat levels is an obvious solution, but I regret being limited to only that tired option.

-T

PS: Apologies for the giant post -- I was trying to be succinct!

[Shane]