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Comments
That said, the Juggalo monster was fairly smart for a horror movie monster. He knew how to game human curiosity for fun and profit. Total hipster though, using that ancient Super 8 set up.
The trailers definitely revealed way too much, but I try not to judge the movie based on that. That's a problem with a lot of movies.
I never thought Juggalo, but I thought he looked a lot like one of the dudes from Slipknot.
You have got to love a game that rewards you EXP for looking at the nice views and jumping onto the hard-to-reach ledges.
Or for giving you different abilities and attacks for the different weapon types you equip.
Or doing a quest that allows absolutely anyone to jump in and pitch in, which doesn't detract from the rewards you get doing said thing solo.
Even if that is completely nonsensical as an abstraction.
I want to play GW2 but I don't want to pay $60 for it without having actually tried it.
Seriously, why is there still no trial available.
^^ Yeah, basically that.
As an abstraction, EXP means experience points.
Generally, you gain EXP by fighting enemies- becoming more experienced at fighting, you could say. This doesn't always translate well, because you can go up like, fourty levels fighting slimes and then be an awesome bear murderer without ever fighting bears before, but it works well enough.
Some games get weird about this, and give you EXP for things like opening chests and disarming traps, which is still weird, but I guess I can see how it works- you're getting more experienced at something.
But rewarding you with experience points for looking at the scenery?
As a game mechanic, it makes sense, because you get to reward people for exploring and actually looking at the world they've built.
But as an abstraction, somehow, looking at pretty trees makes you better at killing things.
Another thing I like: currency subsets! Copper coins to silvers to gold. Which means that every item you can buy with real monies you can buy with in-game currency, just by putting more effort into it.
Yes, except that's not experience, which is the abstraction I am talking about.
Well, if you were a sniper, looking at pretty landscapes sorta kinda maybe would help you kill peeps.
Although all things considered, I don't think experience is supposed to represent only the ability of killing peeps.
Generally, experience just represents how good you are at being an RPG hero, not specifically how good you are at fighting.
It all depends.
There are games where it means more. However, in order for it to actually mean something, that must be reflected in the game mechanics- i.e. gaining more experience points must make you better at the tasks.
For a sniper, looking at a landscape sorta helps. The same would go if you were a ranger, or a druid- people who are attuned to nature and such.
But, again, you need to become better at it through gaining more experience points in order for this abstraction to work.
^ See... exactly what I just wrote, really.
You know, as much as the TES games are all systemic disasters, I think character progression is something they do well. If you do a thing, you get better at that thing. Picking a lock doesn't make you better at fighting bears, and fighting bears doesn't make you better at picking locks.
Although picking locks does mean that you have more health to survive being mauled by bears, in Skyrim.
True.
Though HP is kind of an absurd abstraction to begin with.
Yeah, it is.
And despite that one flaw, outside of that, TES' system is great. Although it would probably be better if they reasonably allowed for you to max out most of your skills without resorting to grinding (lockpicking, I'm looking at you).
Lockpicking always winds up really high for me just as part of normal play.
Also, I should mention that people did complain about the progression system in Oblivion, but that wasn't a problem with PC progression so much as NPC progression.
That's not really true. Raising your skills eventually results in an increase in your character's level, which allows for increased attributes, which benefit any skill that is related to the attribute. Theoretically, this should mean you get better at things that you do frequently, but it's still possible to, say, improve at archery just because you jumped around a lot.
Also, I don't really see how it's an example of good character progression. It's just unnecessarily tedious. A standard leveling system usually works way better.
I usually end up with 80 lockpicking around the time I'm maxing Two-Handed after maxing out whatever armour I'm using and One-Handed.
Yes, and the attributes you use a lot can increase more. So it's much like, say, lifting weights might make me able to swing a sword harder.
I'm not seeing how it's less tedious for skills to automatically increase as you use them than to have to assign skill points to the ones you use when you level.
Ummm, all scenery points I've seen require jumping around, and some are hidden somewhere or are reached through hidden ways. You're granted exp. for hiking and scouting, it's not unlike lockpicking.
Well, they're different cases.
In The Elder Scrolls, the more you pick locks, the better your character gets at picking locks, with lockpicking EXP or something, however you want to describe it.
You don't get better at hiking in Guild Wars 2, though. Well, you might, but that's because the player's skill increases- the EXP you get for exploring doesn't make you any better at exploring.
Of course, if I'm wrong I'll gladly retract my points and that'll be awesome.
CU, is it even okay to post in this thread
because I have no idea what's going on there, what Ultima is about, or anything
Yeah, sure, go ahead.
And if you don't know what Ultima is...you'll find out by reading it
I just like being able to just take a break from killing things and just run around, looking at things, and get rewarded for it.
Because if you want to improve a particular skill remotely quickly, you basically have to use it exclusively. If you happen to be very bad at that skill, that means grinding for hours until the skill is at a level where it's even usable. In a standard system, you could just play normally and then when you level up, you put the points in the skill you're bad at until you stop being bad at it.
The other thing is that because gaining character levels means so little, and skill increases are so relatively frequent and you get so many of them and each one individually has such a small effect, you never really feel any sense that your character is actually getting stronger like you do when you have less-frequent level ups where lots of things improve at once.
It definitely is a good incentive.
It's just that it doesn't make very much sense as an abstraction.
Good mechanic for the game, though- encouraging people to explore instead of killing another twenty rats.
Anyway, to reply to DYRE:
I don't think that's a good thing. At least, not for the Elder Scrolls series.
A large part of the success of the Elder Scrolls series has to do with the immersion in the game. A traditional leveling system is basically the exact opposite of immersive- it consistently encourages you to keep an eye on the EXP bar, and pops up with a stupid little screen that reminds you that everything is to do with stats.
The Elder Scrolls is kinda bad with the fiddly details, but what it's attempting to do is a lot better than the traditional RPG level advancement system. It doesn't feel like you're outside of the game- if you wish to use one-handed swords, then you use them, and you become better at using them the more you do, as you learn how to use them more effectively.
The execution of the system is flawed and annoying, but it's much better for the series than a traditional leveling system would ever be, and a lot of RPG's could do with something closer to this than the traditional system.