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The experience system kind of sucks


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The problem is that it -is- a game, and thus quite easy for the player to manage (or remove altogether) the actual dangers from the simulated combat in order to farm experience;

...

This doesn't change the fundamental problem of having to grind (however little) to maximize stat gains however.

Since you have stated that you won't be doing this, and everyone else in the thread who doesn't like the idea of farming XP has also said that they won't be doing so, what, exactly, is the problem? Why are you offended by the notion that someone who enjoys farming experience may actually do so in the privacy of their own home, while playing a single-player game?

Your argument really does seem to boil down to, "Someone may play this game in a fashion I don't like, and the developers need to prevent this."

Edited by Sable Wyvern
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I'm offended now?

I'm pointing out that the system currently encourages the player to make decisions at odds with the tactical combat simulation. Playing the game as a Tamagochi with guns (sic) currently yields better results for the player than playing it as a combat simulator. This isn't a dealbreaker, albeit I do loathe the game giving me feedback that I haven't played a mission optimally despite a 0 casualty rate and having achieved all goals.

Core gameplay and the reward system using different metrics is bad game design. And, since it's almost impossible to quantify the player performance through numbers (beyond casualty rates) this begs the question how the experience system can be changed to reflect this if possible or, if not, if it's strictly needed to begin with.

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albeit I do loathe the game giving me feedback that I haven't played a mission optimally despite a 0 casualty rate and having achieved all goals.
So basically you are upset that you peaked behind the curtain? :P (as there is no feedback saying you didn't perform to par.. only lack of positive feedback that you are expecting to be there)

Do you have any ideas how to tie the AP and Strength stat gains (as those seems to be the only ones causing an issue?) to some mechanic that isn't as farmable as running laps around the chinook?

Edited by Gorlom
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Some form of progression is definitely needed in this type of game for me.

You could tie strength, AP, and accuracy to rank gains but that doesn't make a lot of sense.

You don't suddenly become stronger or a better shot because you got a new job.

The only way to give bonuses to stats should be to tie it to something the player chooses to do with that particular trooper.

That also ties in to the attachment of your troops as they would get better as you play them, rather than by being sat back at base in a training school.

Plus Chris doesn't want training to be a major factor, if training makes it into the game at all.

The actions to increase stats can be altered though, it just needs a bit of thought as to what actions make most sense to increase those abilities without making them too easy to increase.

The problem is that any time you add a mechanic that can be used by the player for a benefit you are also adding one that can be abused by another player.

You can make it incredibly difficult to gain stats by performing these actions but that just means grinder will run round for longer while the player who doesn't care about grinding stats will be penalised.

You can cap the amount of gains made each mission to a reasonable level that reflects how much you think a 'normal' mission would give but then the grinder will get that bonus each time while the other player will still not get it as often.

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Morale bonuses only? Sounds like something for a harder difficulty.

If you are going to remove stat bonuses, then why not remove this too. Your initial troops are the best available, and are therefore very confident indeed about their skills and abilities. Making them any braver, is going to result in them running naked into combat believing that their magical talismans are going to make them alien proof.

Thoughts:

If the soldiers are at their peak to begin with, I'd have training facilities to ensure that they stay there, or their stats drop. So anything they don't manage to do in combat, they have to pick up on back in the base.

Shame there are no skills. then you would have something to actively improve on beyond the stats. Although arguably, a lot of the troops will be very capable in the core skills to, so there's possibly not much advancement there either. "Gosh Pvt Oathbraker has learned Spanish! Hooray for the skills system."

Ditch stats altogether. Provide a rough guide to how good the troop is to enable squad roles. Example: Pvt Sable Wyvern is Very Strong. Therefore he'll be handy in picking up the support weapons.

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Well this is in alpha so it isn't a combat simulator. The ai is thick and can be taken advantage of. (so that can be improved) Once the ai is smarter then you can say people aren't using this game as a combat simulator.

If you want a combat simulator play a game that doesn't involve aliens.....

Try full spectrum warrior.

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  • 10 months later...

I'm sorry for the Necro, but this thread sums up my current biggest issue with the game, and Infinitum already exhaustively explained why, way better than I could ever do :)

So, I would like to know if there are any plans in the near future to change the stat advancement system; if there are, we can then talk about how we could change it.

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And adding soldier advancement that isn't linked with combat is breaking the risk / reward mechanic of risking your troops dying in order to make them better at fighting, which would be extremely bad game design.

So why don't you connect stat gain to the risk / reward mechanic?

Stat gain only happens where the aliens can see/attack the soldiers.

A ranged-only alien without ammo would not count if it's far away. Skirting the edge of an alien's effective range would not count.

Gotta be maybe within 90% of the alien's effective range to gain "generic XP".

The only exception is attacking and damaging an alien. That's always good.

(so throwing grenades only does something if you actually hit and damage an alien)

This way, XP is only gained by risking your neck... or doing something productive.

Different weapons can train different stats.

Instead of every shot training accuracy, stat gain could be

  • Sniper Rifle

    85% accuracy

    10% reflexes

    5% strength

  • MG

    60% accuracy

    15% reflexes

    25% strength

  • Shotgun

    55% accuracy

    25% reflexes

    5% strength

    15% AP

This way you could minimise the "need" for the heavy weapons specialists to run around in circles and throwing grenades to train strength. Your CQB team would also "train AP" by doing their jobs.

The annoying part of any such "learning by doing" systems is that it's often beneficial to perform stupid and repetitive tasks to improve stats.

(like in Silent Storm before you install the auto-train script that automatically increases a soldier's stats to what he should have at his level)

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I think one problem is that people insist on calling them spec ops therefor they are allready perfect. I have abstracted this away. The aliens bombarded many military base killing most special operations soldiers therefor the people I get still need improvement. And since this is an alien incursion the soldiers are extremely busy back at base so no treadmills or shooting ranges for them :)

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The annoying part of any such "learning by doing" systems is that it's often beneficial to perform stupid and repetitive tasks to improve stats.

(like in Silent Storm before you install the auto-train script that automatically increases a soldier's stats to what he should have at his level)

That's exactly the core issue: as long as soldier advancement is directly related to specific actions performed on the battlefield, then the optimal way of playing will be performing unnecessary/repetitive/tedious tasks in ground combat.

"But you don't actually have to do that! You can just play missions with the only goal of eliminating all enemies, and take the stat gains that come with it!"

Can we? This game, especially on higher difficulties, is supposed to be constantly challenging, where just a couple of mistakes can make you lose. How can such a delicate balance be achieved if the player has the choice of performing tedious and time-consuming tasks in order to gain a significant advantage?

In short, I believe that the ideal solution would be something akin to the system in the 2012 remake: soldiers gain a bit of experience just for participating in a mission, and a variable amount when they kill an alien, the tougher the alien the higher the xp payout. This xp is then distributed into the soldier's stats, either selected by the player in the mission debriefing, or being raised at random, or maybe being tied to the soldier's role (thus giving roles more significance than just inventory presets).

This would still require rookies to actively participate in combat, since they would advance very slowly with just the mission payout, but it would switch the focus of ground combat back to eliminating the alien threat in the safest way possible, rather than ensuring that each of your men has run enough to maximize his TUs, shot enough to maximize his accuracy, etc.

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I'd much rather have a soldier gain experience for something they actually did, than pulled from a points pool.

Example: Cpl Wyvern lumps around his LMG in an industrial map. He's had to do this sort of thing for a while, and he isn't surprised he can carry more as a result.

Sgt Ubiquitous sits in the Chinook on those same missions, picking off aliens with a sniper rifle. He doesn't move an inch. Everyone assumes Ubiquitous must be injecting steroids on the missions as he's certainly a lot stronger these days.

Makes little sense.

I'd also much prefer it to a system where attribute gain is based on what you shot.

Example: Cdr Gorlom proudly stands in the alien command room. He's survived mental assaults, plasma casters and hand to hand combat with three Sebilians en route to securing the base. He feels the nice glow of his reactions and bravery going up a little as a result of experience earned.

Sgt thothkins follows the Cdr a safe 20 yards away. With the command room in sight, thothkins lobs in a couple of grenades from a safe range and listens to melody of alien death cries. thothkins feels the warm glow of huge stat boosts for having wiped out the alien command team, (and their big XP bounty) having done very little to earn them.

Makes little sense.

Since this thread was put into the ground the first time, (it was a nice service) the number of points available for farming has been modified, and I find the sudden mission end once the last alien has been taken out puts an end to at least a turn of running around the Chinook.

In run throughs of recent builds, I'm finding that my soldiers progress quite nicely, and are able in combat, without farming at all. They're kept pretty busy by the challenge.

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So why don't you connect stat gain to the risk / reward mechanic?

Stat gain only happens where the aliens can see/attack the soldiers.

A ranged-only alien without ammo would not count if it's far away. Skirting the edge of an alien's effective range would not count.

Gotta be maybe within 90% of the alien's effective range to gain "generic XP".

The only exception is attacking and damaging an alien. That's always good.

(so throwing grenades only does something if you actually hit and damage an alien)

This way, XP is only gained by risking your neck... or doing something productive.

Different weapons can train different stats.

Instead of every shot training accuracy, stat gain could be

  • Sniper Rifle

    85% accuracy

    10% reflexes

    5% strength

  • MG

    60% accuracy

    15% reflexes

    25% strength

  • Shotgun

    55% accuracy

    25% reflexes

    5% strength

    15% AP

This way you could minimise the "need" for the heavy weapons specialists to run around in circles and throwing grenades to train strength. Your CQB team would also "train AP" by doing their jobs.

The annoying part of any such "learning by doing" systems is that it's often beneficial to perform stupid and repetitive tasks to improve stats.

(like in Silent Storm before you install the auto-train script that automatically increases a soldier's stats to what he should have at his level)

While I'm not bothered by the current system, I'm actually a little impressed by this idea. Wouldn't mind implementing it, just to show how gaming design should be.

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A game I played a lot had an interesting take of skill gains, It was based on stress, i.e. the more stress you had the faster you learned. Stress would come from getting close to more enemies then friendlies, and how powerful the enemies were, and of course getting shot at helped a lot.

This game has a moral system which kind of works the same way, I believe, so how about tying it into that, i.e. the less morale you have the more bonus to skill gains you get, and on the opposite end of the spectrum have low skill gains per missions for feeling too confident, i.e. surrounded by high ranking commanders.

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I'd have thought that getting shot at only improved your Dodging skill. Or in Xenonuats, help your reactions.

I never think to myself "Gee I need to study this report, but it's taking ages. I'll just take it, and this clear bag of cash, into the middle of the city. The stress will make me pick it up in no time." :)

Likewise with morale. People with feeble morale are tougher to train than those who have some self confidence and desire to do well.

Teacher: Johnny? Are you listening?

Student 1: Sir, Johnny just hung himself in a fit of depression.

Teacher: Why don;t students bring notes if they want to leave, like in the old days?

True, arrogant, self important people may also struggle by assuming they already know everything. But generally, I think there's a flaw there.

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I always thought that a Rec Room facility was a good idea in order to provide morale boosts. Especially following terror missions, defeats and alien psionics. Ah well...

Or skills, to add to the basic training, one of which would simply be "On Leave" as a way of rebuilding some lost morale.

Sorry, did someone saying "beyond the scope of development"? It just gets me started. :)

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I'd have thought that getting shot at only improved your Dodging skill. Or in Xenonuats, help your reactions.

I never think to myself "Gee I need to study this report, but it's taking ages. I'll just take it, and this clear bag of cash, into the middle of the city. The stress will make me pick it up in no time." :)

Likewise with morale. People with feeble morale are tougher to train than those who have some self confidence and desire to do well.

Teacher: Johnny? Are you listening?

Student 1: Sir, Johnny just hung himself in a fit of depression.

Teacher: Why don;t students bring notes if they want to leave, like in the old days?

True, arrogant, self important people may also struggle by assuming they already know everything. But generally, I think there's a flaw there.

Yeah that's one way to look at it, and anyone will tell you stress and nooses are not too good for memory and learning stuff.

To clarify I was using morale as an indirect factor to stat gains, only because it's already in-game and works similarly. It's only a slight leap of faith to believe that morale and stress are in direct correlation to each other, i.e. low morale is the product of stress. Without having to add another line of code to the xml files.

This is a kind of a fuzzy logic and the results would be unpredictable, and hopefully believable.

You can role play it this way...

You get put under intense severer life threatening ET invasion situations, it could be thought that it pushes you over your own limitations into a stronger soldier, it's a swim or sink situation so to speak.

Intense meaning you retain things faster, you react faster, carry more, make every shot count etc..

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sort of assigning the soldiers roles. It's met with some resistance before, as it forces players down certain paths for their soldiers and may not reflect the experience they have on the field. Which is also the problem with assigning points from a pool. Soldiers get rewarded in areas where they did nothing to deserve the reward. Simpler still would be to leave as is , which I'd prefer to those, I'm afraid.

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I for one don't want them to change the system to something XP based. I love how it is now. Feels more dynamic and natural. Soldiers that fight, gets better, that simple. The XP system with perks feels so gamey to me. For example. I loved the experience system in Medieval War 2. Your king, generals and so on gained random perks and disadvantages dependent on what you did with them. It added so much immersion to the game. Now in Shogun 2 you gain XP and you get to choose what kind of stat increase he would get. It just feels gamey, and takes away alot of the immersion.

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While I can appreciate the argument, I enjoy seeing my soldiers skill up.

I side with thotkins in seeing this represent a mental adjustment to fighting aliens, their technology, using adapted human technology etc, even if this isn't directly shown in gameplay.

The only thing I might change is the range of skillups - it is strange to see a vet with 2x stats of a rookie. If rookies start from 50-60 but the max was 80 and you had +1 max skillup per mission it might feel a bit better.

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