Combat XP division/sharing.

[Gabriel77Dan]

Guess I'll be the outlier and argue combat XP should not be shared (I'm not expecting to be popular, but I'll present my case regardless)

In general, lets say you get XP for doing things in the world (picking locks, disarming bombs/traps, hacking terminals, healing characters, finding secrets, "winning conversations", etc.) In all of those scenarios, shouldn't the character doing the action get the XP?

Here are the scenarios/reasons I don't like "sharing":

If you share equally, then whats stopping you from boosting a weak character's combat level by grinding with a high level characters while (he/she) cowers in a corner? Also, how would this work if I split up my party, do they share XP even though split up party members are in no danger?

If you share based on damage output and one party member goes "Full Auto" all the time and chews through clips like popcorn, they aren't doing anything skillful, so I don't like that one either.

I'd propose that the NPC that kills something, will get it's XP bounty. Just like if they successfully picked a lock, they'd get an xp bump. Can this system be abused, yes, but I can't think of any perfect system of sharing, and at least it's consistent. Besides, I like the idea of having an asymmetric party, (some people will excel at combat, maybe others not) Perhaps you need to recruit/escort a scientist (who is in your party) through some dangerous territory, should he get combat xp for doing nothing? Each person can have a specialty (just like in reality) and each person should be incentivized and rewarded (xp) for doing their job well.

I hope perks play a major role (in addition to Levels/XP) in WL2, unlocking "Perks" could incentivize not just by level grinding, (a la jumping up and down in Oblivion) but by accomplishing things (i.e. you got 20 critical hits with a rifle, you unlock a "sharpshooter" perk, you did 1000 damage with Golf Club, you unlock a "Fore" perk, disarmed 20 IEDs unlock a "Hurt Locker" perk...)

Just my 2 cents (Just realized I'm kinda agreeing with @Inca)

Well, thing is, if you lockpick then I hardly think the entire party is gonna stand over his/her shoulder and go "Soooo what'chu doooing? >:3 "
So those things are more personal moments, you, a lock, dim lights in a blood-stained corridor, lovely.
But in combat, well, the entire party "has" to engage, not talking about gameplay terms but in realistic terms, if you are with a group of people and you get attacked then I doubt 3 of your group is just gonna continue eating canned pork, no they're gonna act, whether it's to hide, take cover, run or whatever they're still doing "something", and for that they should earn experience.

This new dude in our kitchen at the restaurant I work at was helping out with the dishes and he was gonna put a tin-plate in the uhm... Machine-Wash`? And I showed him that if you put two of them in there with leaning on the side a little then both get cleaned and you can cut corners and have time for other dishes.
Through him watching me he gained experience, just like how I watched others dish and gained experience of washing dishes (which is the key to the question of what is the meaning of life).

In battle, even if the other's don't perform the killing shot they still gain experience from the situation.
If I fire a gun and I fail miserably I still gain experience, I learn through trial and error, I learn from the mistakes I make, how to "not" make them, maybe in behind the scenes a party member tells me some tricks and tips after the battle is over on how I can improve and what I did wrong.
Could probably be applied to other things to, failing to pick a lock could earn 5 exp. (Can't be exploited though as the lock will either open or jam if you push for it long enough.)

Picking locks, forging letters, by-passing electronic locks et cetera are all personal moments, the entire party is not gonna sit on his/her shoulders while they do it. But combat? That involves the entire group and the entire group gains experience from either actions or watching others.

[Woolfe]

How about this:
XP is sort of a REALLLY a fake concept. It suppose to represent learning and maturation but instead it promotes LEVELing, and once you get a level you get to distribute skills.
Let's reverse it a little bit: use skill-get that skill "skill points", once you advance enough in a skill, you get to LEVEL UP that skill with associated perks.

I actually think this is an interesting idea. WL even actually did it to a degree, by allowing use of skills to increase them. But WL also included the XP concept. Which allowed you to improve skills that weren't used often, because there were not many opportunities to use them. This doesn't mean they weren't useful skills. At times they were key to resolving some things in a certain way.

[Klim]

Some thoughts: XP should be given only for quests solution, killing enemies (not much) and being in danger, and improving skills should be realized through using of them, but not in TES style, and buying them for "general" XP. How about next concept: you will get skill experience both in case of success and failure, however, amount of experience will depend on chance of success/failure – the lower chance – the more experience you get, but in case of critical success/failure (you failed, despite had 95% chance of success, for instance) you will get no experience – it was just luck. This system will help avoid situation, when you will improve your rifle skill just standing in front of wall and shooting in it, however you will be able to paint target there, move for 50 or 100 meters away and train in shooting in that target. What about combat: killing enemy should be encouraged, of course, but the main experience soldier get in combat is ability to stay calm and reasonable in extreme situations; so character who stayed alive after being shot (or nearly shot) in chest should get more “general” XP than another one who killed Death Claw (or some other dangerous enemy) with sniper rifle.

[Woolfe]

This is what I would like to see.

Party XP - All players in the Party gain a base level xp, because even if they did nothing, they were still present to experience the situation. This works on all aspects Combat/Speech/LockPicking/Etc

Skills improves based on use. So a player who does more damage/kills more opponents etc, should really be getting a greater degree of combat skill (whatever they may be) increases, than the player who doesn't do as much damage. However if a player is performing another function. Healing for example in the midst of combat, then they should gain points in that skill as well.

So to me the bonus for the player performing well in combat(or any situation)is the skill increase.

However if they did have an XP increase for performing well in combat, then it should apply to damage + kill. The Bonus should also be applicable in other situations not just combat as well. So party gets xp for picking a lock, but the specific player who performed the action gets a bonus as well.

[JerryLove]

Maybe I'm old and my memory is going: but I seem to recall Wasteland improving specific skills by their use.

To be honest: I've generally preferred this to a leveling system.

I'd like to see most functions based on skill levels, and those increase with use.
For a use for general XP... how about letting that pool (rather than going to anyone in particular) and then new skills (or if you are desperate: skill upgrades) can be baught for individual characters as the player sees fit.

Want a second medic? When you get 2000XP, spend it on "Bobby Wasteland" to buy him "Medic" at level 1. As he uses it, it will go up.

Needs some refinement: but perhaps a good idea?

[Wild_Bill_711]

Think Jerry remembers Wasteland quite well, just to elaborate a bit -

The original (default) characters, OR any player created, had a maximum IQ of '18'... limiting the initial skills available...

Skills - certain 'skills' required a higher intelligence to acquire:
Medic required a 15 IQ and 'cost' 2 skill points (SKP's)
Doctor required a 21 IQ and 'cost' 3 SKP's
Energy Weapon required a 23 IQ and cost 3 SKP's
Safe Crack & Bomb Disarm both required a 15 IQ and 'cost' 2 SKP's each
Cyborg Tech required a 24 IQ and 'cost' 3 SKP's (the highest 'skill' in the game)

Skill Levels - each 'promotion' made it possible for a character to achieve/attain a higher skill level (example a 'Private' could not get past a level 1; a 'Specialist' could not get past level 3; a 'Corporal' could not get past a level 5; etc.)
Each 'promotion' "earned" the character 4 'points'... 2 were added to CON and the player could distribute 2 toward any attribute they chose... raising IQ gave them 2 (SKP) points toward 'new skills' or raising existing skills. (game 'experience' was the best method for 'improving' skills.)

Highpool, Ag Center, Desert Nomads, and Quarts were mostly 'level 1' adversaries with a few 'level 2' added... more level 2's as you progressed along. Needles added the level 3 adversaries, especially the robots in the Temple of Blood.

Las Vegas had several level 3's... and the Warroid Mark III's were level 4's (in the streets) before several level 4's in the Sewers.

The Citadel and Base Cochise had many level 6 & 7 adversaries. Level 7 fighting/weapons skills were the highest attainable... except for a 'skill check' "wrestling pop-up robots" which could 'boost' a Brawling/Pugilism skill to a level 8 when those skills were already at maximum levels.

ALL the characters participating in a 'fight' HAD the opportunities to 'raise their skill levels' to the maximum available in the 'encounter' just by 'inflicting some damage' to the adversary... the 'experience points' awarded (toward the next promotion) only were awarded to the character 'making the kill' !

Also was possible to reach Medic level 12+, Gamble level 12+, and Pick Lock 10+ by continued 'use' of those skills. Pick Lock required repetitive 'tries' on the most difficult doors... rather than explosives as a 'quick solution' ! A level 12 Medic was nearly as good as a level 6 Doctor.

[Kromiv]

I don't know if this has been brought up before or not. I did look through the other posts a bit, but I didn't search through the whole forum. But anyway...

I think that when a battle is over, experience points should be determined by how much damage each party member did the the mob and distributed accordingly, and not just give all the experience to the person who got the final kill shot.

The way it is in the first Wasteland (and many other games as well), if you are fighting a mob that has 100 HP, you can have person A hit him for 99HP of damage, and person B hit him for 1 HP damage. Person B will get the kill and all the experience points. Person A gets nothing even though he did most of he damage.
In this situation, I think person A should get 99% of the experience points, and person B get 1%.

Maybe it wont be divided exactly like that. Maybe the formula would take other things into consideration, like the level of each party member, the type of weapon each one is using, etc... My point is giving some credit to everyone who contributes to the death of each mob and not just give it all away to one person.

[DrunkVision]

booo! That is a bad idea. I played such games and it's a nighmare to keep your team balanced and effective if each one gets what he earned in battle. It's one of the spects of realism that should not be used in video games. The same with who kills monster. The additional reason is that each class has it's own percentage of effectiveness at the beginning and dividing experience by the effectiveness itself just creates giant holes between characters progress.

[Lantander]

Xp should neither be awarded to only the person killing the mob, nor go only to those who deal the most damage. That way would lead to splitting the party level-wise, because a medic/egineer/melee specialist will always lose out to the sniper for kills&damage.

So please, go the sensible way and award group xp for any kill, quest, etc. - no matter who did the deed.

[Luckmann]

Terrible, terrible idea. This would be bad in a tactical squad-game, but this is still primarily a roleplaying game; which makes it quite possibly the worst suggestion I've seen on this forum so far.

XP should be spread evenly across the entire group, no matter how or where it's gained. It's easy, quick and dirty, but mechanically it is necessary to prevent distribution from becoming lopsided. Can you imagine how much XP the group mechanic would get? Or the group doctor? Or anyone who isn't directly involved in wholesale murder? What about those soldiers that carry out the often necessary coverage of the rear? The kinds of soldiers that will almost never get kills, but without them even a lone opponent could cause mayhem. Compare these to the soldiers that'll do the sniping up front, or are good at setting up an ambush.

Anyone who's played Jagged Alliance/2 or Fallout Tactics will likely relate well to what I'm saying. I had some recruits that never did anything other than cover the approach for my main force, or were sneaking around our rear, watching for incoming.

What about the group diplomat?

[Kromiv]

I was really looking at how Wasteland 1 is, and saying that I dont like the way XP is awarded. I dont like the fact that experience is only given to the person who gets the final kill shot. There should be away of distributing the xp more evenly.
I agree that sharing the exp among the whole group makes more sense. But what about cases where a party member doesnt do anything at all? Should they still get xp for the kill?
For example. what if you run across a mob that is easy enough to kill that the first person in the roster kills it in one hit. You are saying the whole group should get the same amount of xp? What if it happens 100 times in a row? Should the other party members keep getting xp even though they are doing nothing at all?

Another example...What if your group is pretty high level and one of your rangers dies. You go to the Ranger station and create a new one. It's going to be a lot lower level than your other members. If you go to one of the higher end zones and start killing the mobs in that area. Your low level ranger's skills are not high enough to even score a hit, and keeps constantly keeps getting critically wounded. Should he gets the same xp points as your higher level rangers that are actually doing the damage? I dont think he should. He would get so much xp that he would gain levels very fast without doing anything but getting knocked out.

I guess it really depends on what type of combat system they decide to implement. I just want to see something more fair to the whole group than just awarding the ranger with the kill shot.

[DrunkVision]

I was really looking at how Wasteland 1 is, and saying that I dont like the way XP is awarded. I dont like the fact that experience is only given to the person who gets the final kill shot. There should be away of distributing the xp more evenly.
I agree that sharing the exp among the whole group makes more sense. But what about cases where a party member doesnt do anything at all? Should they still get xp for the kill?
For example. what if you run across a mob that is easy enough to kill that the first person in the roster kills it in one hit. You are saying the whole group should get the same amount of xp? What if it happens 100 times in a row? Should the other party members keep getting xp even though they are doing nothing at all?

Another example...What if your group is pretty high level and one of your rangers dies. You go to the Ranger station and create a new one. It's going to be a lot lower level than your other members. If you go to one of the higher end zones and start killing the mobs in that area. Your low level ranger's skills are not high enough to even score a hit, and keeps constantly keeps getting critically wounded. Should he gets the same xp points as your higher level rangers that are actually doing the damage? I dont think he should. He would get so much xp that he would gain levels very fast without doing anything but getting knocked out.

I guess it really depends on what type of combat system they decide to implement. I just want to see something more fair to the whole group than just awarding the ranger with the kill shot.

khm,khm. Pal, what do you think experience is? Is it something you make by using your skills or is it something you gain by looking at the work of that dude over there? What is the essential difference between those two and is there? There are veterans of WW2 who didn't kill a single person and still, they can do such thing much more efficiently than recruits.

[Fuzi0n]

I think that when a battle is over, experience points should be determined by how much damage each party member did the the mob and distributed accordingly, and not just give all the experience to the person who got the final kill shot.

The easiest way is to just distribute XP evenly amongst all party members, otherwise it will be much harder to balance the game, especially if the game is going to be class based... The medics and supporters, For example, won't get much XP otherwise. You can of course balance that out, but it will just complicate things.

In the end it's up to Brian and the boys: Do they want to go the easy way and distribute XP evenly amongst all teammates (which is perfectly fine) or do they want to complicate things for themselves and distribute XP proportional to the amount of damage each teammate has induced.

[Zombra]

Well, I think we can all agree that xp distribution should not be stupidly lopsided towards the characters that get the kill shots. I think that's the main point of the OP.

I would actually be fine with noncombat characters getting lesser or even no combat xp ... as long as use of noncombat skills does get you xp. If a medic speeds up your healing during camp, he should get xp for that. Picking a lock should give that character xp. And so forth. Then again, even a character who participates in combat as little as possible will still be Evading. That's a combat action and deserves xp too.

[Kromiv]

Yeah, it really depends on how they are going to award xp in Wasteland 2. In Wasteland 1 you only get xp one way, and thats through combat. And you only get combat xp one way, and that's by getting the kill shot. You can use other skills, like doctor, picklock, perception, etc. But all that will do is occasionally raise your level in that skill. You get no xp points for using skills.
Because of that, Wasteland 1 really wasnt class-based. It was all combat-oriented and skills were just secondary aspects of the characters. So you really didnt have a guy that was just a doctor. He would be a fighter, who was trained in the doctor skill. He would have to fight, otherwise he would never get xp. In fact, I always made sure all my rangers were trained in Medic or Doctor because at the end of a tough fight, you never know who may be the only ones still conscious and have to revive the rest of the party.

But as it was said before, it's up to the dev team to decide what they want to do. I am just hoping they will have some sort of system in place to distribute xp evenly.

[Lucius]

I'm in the skill based experience camp. If a character successfully hits and does damage they should receive experience. If someone successfully lockpicks a door they should get experience. This would offset the loss of xp awarded to support characters. I don't mind if the person who gets the killshot gets a bonus though, but I really wouldn't care one way or another if xp is generally given out by skill use.

Regarding the game being class based, there will not be selectable classes at the beginning of the game, just skills to assign to your characters. It would depend on how you assign skills to determine if they fit into a class or not, but there won't be any dictated classes like fighter, thief, healer or what have you.

[Ronin73]

I'm in the skill based experience camp. If a character successfully hits and does damage they should receive experience. If someone successfully lockpicks a door they should get experience. This would offset the loss of xp awarded to support characters. I don't mind if the person who gets the killshot gets a bonus though, but I really wouldn't care one way or another if xp is generally given out by skill use.

Regarding the game being class based, there will not be selectable classes at the beginning of the game, just skills to assign to your characters. It would depend on how you assign skills to determine if they fit into a class or not, but there won't be any dictated classes like fighter, thief, healer or what have you.

Yeah I can go along with this. As long the xp distribution is balanced out so it doesn't reward a certain application of skills over others I think this can work. That said if there is an overall reward for a completed quest I think that always should be divided evenly between the group.

While there won't be selectable classes at the beginning of the game, I wouldn't object to an option of selecting a previous career before joining up with the Desert Rangers. Examples could be an ex biker, merchant, aide to a mayor etc. The downside is they would have already have a skill set, but a possible upside is they could potentially have some quests/missions/whatever you want to call in the Wasteland universe exclusive to that profession, which would offer a few variations in replayability. Of course this would be strictly optional. Yeah this part is off topic, but I saw this part of your post and it got me brainstorming a bit

[Lazy Nomad]

Let me say that I am totally against even distribution of XP. Boo and hiss to that. You get what you put in. I don't know how you'd pull that off, but that's the way I'd like it.

[Drool]

In Wasteland 1 you only get xp one way, and thats through combat. And you only get combat xp one way, and that's by getting the kill shot. You can use other skills, like doctor, picklock, perception, etc. But all that will do is occasionally raise your level in that skill. You get no xp points for using skills.

Incorrect. Just because it didn't tell you that you were gaining XP, doesn't mean you didn't get it. That's how the easy leveling tricks work, after all. Climbing rubble under Spade's generates XP via the Climb skill and walking along Ugly's roof generates via the Perception skill.

As for how Wasteland handled combat XP, I don't think too many people actually liked it. It was great if you know the XP value of various foes and want to power-level one character, but in general, it wasn't a very good system. I remember constantly reordering my marching order to smooth out XP gains when I outclassed the people I was fighting.

[Zombra]

Incorrect. Just because it didn't tell you that you were gaining XP, doesn't mean you didn't get it. That's how the easy leveling tricks work, after all. Climbing rubble under Spade's generates XP via the Climb skill and walking along Ugly's roof generates via the Perception skill.

Wow. Sounds like under the hood Wasteland had a pretty good system all by itself.