Steinhauer's Opinion: Killing Experience, Part 2

In his latest column, Jonathan Steinhauer continues his look at what he calls "The Killing Experience". He began two weeks ago in part one and today looks at more recent examples of this trend. It's all about RPGs and how they use killing as the primary form of advancement, or experience.

A second, much more recent, example is with Bethesda's Elder Scrolls series, particularly Oblivion. In this game which follows the standard RPG model, there is no experience gain from killing. In fact, there is no experience at all. Instead, character growth is built on an array of skills specific to a particular class. As those skills are used over an over again, proficiency grows. Once there are ten threshold increases in the class skills, a new level is gained. At that point health, stamina, magicka, and prime stats also improve.

Read more after the click.

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lmao its funny how u guys still put up these journals and forums and shit

u guys need to get it thru ur head kno1 has commented these in many previous journals except for maybe 1 theres useto be about 50 on each

guys im sry to say it...but u failed know1 cares anymore about this game u had more than enuf time to make it in to what it was suppose to be.i stopped commenting long ago and now i go back and realize every1 else took the path i did this game is a failed project now quit working on it and get on with ur lives( thats even if u so have been working on it)

P.s. i would like a response and i will check up in a couple of days

Thanks for the read I always love reading this kind of article. It was articles like this that allowed me to realize how much time I was wasting on WoW. Keep up the good work!

Very good points and very important problem arised. I think I have something to add. You gotta differ 2 kinds of experience: experience your character gets and experience you get. What you are talking about is making a model of game experience (one your char gets) closer to real-world experience (your own). But keep in mind, your char can't learn how to retreat from the fight, avoid death, PvP strategy, etc. -- YOU learn it, and it's your own experience which has nothing to do with level of your char and his set of abilities. Same way, you can't learn frost nova rank 3, your char does it. So to better illustrate said before, there will be no point in benefiting your character with an experience bonus for example for failing a quest or taking a monster to 5hp and letting him make away: it is YOU who will learn to complete quest and use special ability to finish fleeing monster off, not your char, who's only purpose in this kind of situation is to aquire this special ability.

Eqlipt, you make an excellent point. There definitely are two types of experience, "player" and "character" with the article only addressing the latter. But I'm not sure your conclusion follows.
Maybe it would help if I illustrated my point this way. Say there are two men fighting and they've been at it a good few minutes. They hack away away at each other and each bleeds from a handful of fleshwounds. Suddenly, a third party steps in, stops the battle, and the two fighters go their seperate ways. Clearly, there is no "player" experience in the sense of knowing when to withdraw or hang tough to the end. The battle was stopped before that final fight-or-flight decision had to be made. But does that also mean the "characters" didn't learn anything? One fighter might have been surprised by a particular sword thrust the other used (and catalogued it away for future use), or perhaps he grew more accustomed to the weight and heft of his new shield. Certainly, a final victor would have gained more experience had the battle been fought to the final conclusion (both because the battle would have lasted longer and because he would have experienced the various stages a fight might go through), but that doesn't mean there wasn't some value gained.
That is why I think there is an argument for "character" experience even in failure and/or retreat. But ultimately, I believe that whole model of xp gain is off. I'd advocate experience more along the lines of Oblivion's skill usage and LOTRO's traits, neither of which are based on the final outcome of the battle at all.

lol u guys above are so blind

#5 completely agree that exp gain model is off. Oblivion model (previously used in Morrowind) solves those unfinished fights problems and lots more.

ps
#6 lol is a very strong point. indeed. i have little to nothing to say

LOTRO and Oblivion systems, involve some type of grinding. On the other side, I would like to comment the lack of reference to EVE Online character system.

Where you don't have to do anything at all. Just earn some money by any means*, to buy the skills who autotrain even when sleep or on holidays.
But that doesn't mean you don't need the personal experience to play. Especialy in PVP battles the lack of knowledge of how are working, your tools, skills and modules is fundamental to win or lose.

*By piracy, interaction with others, trading and so on. The list is huge.