A defense of XP...

(puubert) #1

I’ve been floating around here a couple of days, and I’ve noticed the huge dislike over the XP system.

Now, I’ve been playing ET for a week, and I haven’t learnt all the intricasies of the XP system. But I think people are too harsh on it.

The XP system is not perfect, but I think the game would be weaker without it. If you had no XP system and left everyone on their starting levels, then there’s nowhere to progress. If you start everyone on Level 4 then you still have nowhere to go. XP gives you an incentive to go and kill people and to perform the functions of whatever class you are.

Without XP, how are you going to rank players? Kill count? So the guy with the mortar bombing spawn points (as I’ve seen people bitching about), or the soldier who holes up somewhere with a MG and mows down whoever walks into his line of fire, those people win the rounds instead of medics who revive 20 odd people and engineers who defuse half a dozen dynamite packs.

Granted, I haven’t been playing long, but I haven’t seen any XP-whores. I’ve seen newbies too scared to leave buildings, people who love to mine up the only exit to your spawn point etc etc etc but not XP-whores. The XP system may not be perfect, but it’s better than nothing.

If you want to play without it, then just ignore it. Or if you’re so serious about it, join the army. No XP there, and it’s got ET beat for realism.

But oh well. My first real post. Thoughts and flames equally welcome.

(sniser) #2

Hmm. To me the incentive is to win the round -> objectives. People who worry about score are the problem, not the XP system.

Without XP, how are you going to rank players?

Simple. Spectate them, and form your opinion. Everything else is a waste of time. Player names might as well be sorted alphabetically hehe.

I haven’t seen any XP-whores

Well, you only played for a week… once you noticed a few, you’ll start to see a pattern and keep noticing it all the time.

(ExP|Maximus191) #3

Without XP, how are you going to rank players? Kill count? So the guy with the mortar bombing spawn points (as I’ve seen people bitching about), or the soldier who holes up somewhere with a MG and mows down whoever walks into his line of fire, those people win the rounds instead of medics who revive 20 odd people and engineers who defuse half a dozen dynamite packs.

Personally i think the medic who revives 20 people is doing more to win the round than some camping mg42 gunner.

(Kendle) #4

No doubt if you’ve been browsing these forums you’ll see that I’m one of the XP system’s harshest critics, and whilst I could probably fill many pages as to why it’s such a bad thing, I think it’s summed up pretty much in this statement:

XP gives you an incentive to perform functions. Absolutely correct. What it doesn’t do is give you an incentive to help your team achieve the objective, which is the whole point of the game.

It’s a points system. It gives you points for performing a function. That’s it. That’s all it does. Whether that function is in the team’s interests or not is irrelevant, you still get the points.

You could be the Med who revived the Engy who won the game, or the Med who revived the Covert-Op playing his own game of “who can steal the most uniforms”, it doesn’t matter. You still get the same XP because you performed a function for which points are awarded.

Speaking of Covert-Ops, you can play an entire 30 minute round without coming even remotely close to helping your team achieve anything, but scavenge enough uniforms off dead bodies and you’ll get shed-loads of XP because you performed a function for which points are awarded.

You can be the Axis Engy who, at the start of the game, builds the Truck Barriers on GoldRush, leaving your team-mates to bravely defend the Tank (which is what you should’ve been doing as well), and you’ll get XP for it. Not because you were helping your team, but simply because you performed a function for which points are awarded.

It’s a points system, no more, no less, and all it does is reward you for performing certain functions. The necessity / importance of those functions is irrelevant. How much or how little performing them helps the team is irrelevant. XP is irrelevant.

(Englander) #5

The XP system is cool in the right hands ,when ur doing the right thing by ur team & the objective its great to get promoted for it,if ur playing this way the promotion comes as a nice surprise cos ur not even thinking about ur score or rank,ur only concern is winning & trying to work as a team and if u get promoted inbetween those 2 things I havnt got any problems or dislikes about it.

Unfortunately though it as got a weakness and that weakness comes in the form of an XP Whore its that simple & that frustrating when u have selfish players on ur team who are doing nothing to help with the objective,u could say XP system promotes this style of play but IMO I would prefer to say that there just lame players anyway & would continue to do something lame if the XP system wasnt there.

(Kendle) #6

So the best defense of XP is that it’s “mostly harmless”? :bash:

(Cyber-Knight) #7

I like the XP system, BUT I don’t like that fact that more and more servers are becoming 6-10 map campaigns. (or unlimited XP carry over)

I alwasy though 3 map campaigns were the best. It’s short enough that new joiners can come in and still not get dominated, but long enough for the xp to also make a small difference in matches.

I mean after like 5 maps, it’s almost useless to plant mines cuz everyone is walking around them. And then you have 25% of a team with Flak Jackets (Shrub mod carry overs). And you start playing with a bunch of players who are CONVINCED they NEED XP in order to play the game, so they start doing useless things to gain XP cuz they aren’t skilled enough to earn it while completing objectives.

it’s those ppl that are convinced that they need xp to play this game that bug me. regardless of how you cut it, this is still an FPS game, a good player is a good player with or without XP.

here’s an example of a person who is XP reliant. I’m sure everyone has encountered this once, but there are some Field Ops who for the whole map, just sit in one safe spot and call artillery. they NEVER engage in close combat unless necessary, and barely fire their smg for the entire round. And then they get so excited and cocky when they kill someone every 2 mins. hate those players.

(L2|B4tt3rY) #8

i like the XP system, ur always gonna get whores but who cares

(Loffy) #9

Hi!

I think it all comes down to how you define the purpose.

If your purpose is to take a family picture, for example, then it is enough to say “stand about here”. If you want to guide someone through a minefield, it is not enough to say that (and to be that imprecise).

In an discussion about XP, some say that XP is ok to use because it is pretty harmless. That statement is ok, from their point of view. For others, that argument is way too thin - paper thin - because they have a different view on the game’s overall purpose.

“Guide someone through a minefield?” It was the best example I could think of.
:slight_smile:

// Loffy

(Kendle) #10

LOL, Loffy, I’ve got no idea what that post meant :???:

(Loffy) #11

Lol! Tell me about it! Played on a US server yesterday. Got TK:ed (on Caen, a custom map) five times by the same guy who played as Field op and called artillery. We were attacking, to get the flag. I was a medic and I really tried to get that darn flag. Artillery? As an attacking team? It could be ok, I guess. If you know what you are doing. He put the strikes in the area where his teammates had to run to move forward!
TK:ed not once, not twice… FIVE TIMES! I was stunned at his “skillz”. I had to laugh (a mad laugh - “ha ha” with a crazy grin).

Lol! I read it too, now. And it’s a total mess. It’s Friday, still at work. Guess I’m tired.

Have nice weekend Kendle! Keep an eye open for “Berserk”, my first map (ET). Working on the 6th beta version. The final version should be “out” anytime now.

// L.

(DG) #12

I thought XP was only disliked when it came to XP-whores (those who just do XP stuff like constantly repair truck when the tank is stuck behind barrier 1); and certain imho excessive benefits of skill levels (e.g. panzer can fire too quickly, f’op can spam rather too much arty and so on).

Only thing about XP itself that I’m not so keen on is typically if one team is owning the other, they get more XP and so increasingly get to own them even more. Even then its a team balance issue really though.

(PH@TIE) #13

You will inevitably get players who’s only aim is to out XP everyone else, to the cost of there teams success, or simply XP whore it.

Sometimes tho’ an engineer doing his own thing building/destroying everything in site, may be looking to increase his specific skill level to such an advanced stage, that come the opportunity to plant/disarm, he does so with speed and in greater numbers, securing the victory for his team.

Not all XP whores are XP whores.

(Kendle) #14

Good post, and good to see you guys contributing to the debate.

Personally I’ve run the full range of emotions as far as XP is concerned. I loved it playing test, then started to hate it as I saw what a monster it was becoming, to now being rather immune to it, as long as I stay on Stopwatch severs or Campaign servers with no more than 3 maps. And the point about lame players being lame anyway is obviously true and valid, XP or no XP.

However, as it stands there are serious flaws in the system, which a little balancing would go a long way to compensate. If, and I know it’s probably not going to happen, but if you guys were to issue another patch, I could make a few suggestions as to how the XP system could be tweaked, hopefully to bring it closer to what you originally intended.

For instance:-

[ul]
[li]Covert-Ops getting 5XP for taking a uniform off a dead body (which someone else may have killed). WTF is all that about? Make it 2XP if they made the kill, and 1XP (maybe even 0XP?) if not.
[/li][li]Use map scripting to make non-essential constructibles 0XP, for example, building the Bridge on FuelDump after the Tank has crossed, building the Truck barriers on GoldRush before the Tank has been stolen.
[/li][li]Medic revive gives different points for different Classes, i.e. 3XP for reviving an Engy, 2XP for everyone else.
[/li][li]Make XP proportional to number of players on the team, i.e. Meds get 2XP for a revive if the team has less than 25% Meds, but only 1XP if more than 25% Meds.
[/li][/ul]
btw, I’m giving these as examples. The variable XP based on number of each Class could apply to all Classes, i.e. Field-Ops get less XP per kill if there are more than a certain percentage on the team. This would maybe encourage players to join servers as whatever Class is needed (i.e. whichever the team has the least of) to ensure you don’t end up with 6 Cov-Ops and 1 Engy on the Allied team on FuelDump trying to get the Bridge built.

EDIT: Where’d BongoBoy’s post go, that’s what this one is replying to. :???:

(funkPig) #15

Personally i think the medic who revives 20 people is doing more to win the round than some camping mg42 gunner.

Thats true sometimes . A well placed mg42 can make the medics job easier though. If 1/2 of the opposing team is dead, there will be less people to medicate. :smiley:

I alwasy though 3 map campaigns were the best. It’s short enough that new joiners can come in and still not get dominated, but long enough for the xp to also make a small difference in matches.

I think a four map campaign would be fun to try. It would give the really good players the chance to make general and limit the domination at the same time.

–f

(Englander) #16

No the best defence of it is when people play properly with only the team & the objective in mind, thats who SD had in mind when they created it.

(Sick Boy) #17

It would help alot if the scoreboard at the end was removed, because lots of players are playing to get their name on top of that board and as much as possible in the achievements list or what is it called, and there are stats too if I’m not mistaking about accuracy and stuff, never even got to binding them to a key :chef:

Like in RTCW, the game changed A LOT after OSP introduced stats (or better said, how ppl played), suddenly everyone was using /kill because a /kill doesn’t count as a death, and RTCW stats are all about kill/death ratio…
Before that, RTCW was about objective only (and points, but everyone knew that the points meant nothing and only noobs cared about points. Not the same as XP.)

Conversation in RTCW shifted to “lol 20/2” “omfg nubs 2 HS/kill I pwn jOO”

Luckily because of that we all got acquainted with the /kill and now all use and love it for so many reasons :smiley:

But my point is, XP would be good if noone knew or cared about their own or others XP, and it was just something there so you could gain benefits along the way… Allthough you will always have some dumb kid telling you all about his akimbo pistols… :bash:

(puubert) #18

But my point is, XP would be good if noone knew or cared about their own or others XP, and it was just something there so you could gain benefits along the way…

I can see that there are problems with the system. But my main point, it’s the people abusing the system that are the problem, not so much the system itself. Most servers I’ve played on are pretty good when it comes to this, I guess I haven’t been turned twisted and bitter yet :disgust: lol

(Kendle) #19

Maybe, but if there was no XP, there’d be no system to be abused, would there? :wink:

(Englander) #20

Yea but since there is the XP system on the vast majority of servers & since its gonna be there to stay puubert is right :banana:

I dont see the point in saying if there was no system because thats never gonna be the case ,the vast majority will always play the XP system. :smiley: