User:Midianian/Archives/Rants/No Uses for Excess XP

This is a rant on the somewhat frequent subject of suggestions; having a use for XP after getting all the skills you want. I believe such a mechanic would be inherently bad for the game.

If you want to discuss this, please use the discussion page instead of whatever place I (or anyone else) linked to this from.

Good Things About the Current Situation

The way I see it, it's a good thing that there is no use for XP after a certain point. Reaching your maximum level (whatever you consider it to be) liberates you from having to consider how effective your gameplay is XP-wise, and can concentrate on how effective it is in general. Or just on the fun of playing whichever way you want.

Besides, I like how the XP counter works as a rough estimate of how long someone's been playing.

XP ≠ Good Tactics

XP doesn't encourage good tactics. In fact, most tactics that produce lots of XP are less effective than those that don't give you as much XP. Thus, it's good that XP becomes less important over time, or even useless.

Zombies

Zombies have so few sources of XP that this isn't as clear for them. However, there is at least one obvious situation; destroying decorations. You get the option of destroying decorations when there are no survivors present in a building. For 1 AP you destroy one piece and get 1 XP for it, while you could just click "Ransack" and all the decorations would be destroyed automatically (giving you just 1 XP).

Survivors

Survivors have many examples of this. You get the same amount of XP from killing zombies who are standing outside as from killing zombies who are inside buildings. Killing zombies on the outside is actually counter-productive as you're using much more AP to get them down than what they have to use to get back up. The simple fact is that a zombie that only has Ankle Grab (or Flesh Rot, or Body Building and a Flak Jacket) uses the same amount or less AP than a survivor under optimal circumstances (gets a success in ever chance-based action) with all skills.

One of the easiest and most effective ways of gathering XP is to harm someone who is near you and then heal them. You get XP from both the damage done and healed. However, when looking at this tactic from the perspective of general effectiveness, it's pretty much the worst. You're using your resources for absolutetly nothing productive (other than XP), while using large amounts of your AP. It's even worse than just plain dropping items.

DNA extraction gives you 4 XP per previously unscanned specimen, but if you're doing it with no intention of reviving, you're making it more difficult to those who do want to revive them.

Then there are the important activities like repairing and barricading buildings which give very little XP, but are essential to survivors.

Types of Uses

Bragging Rights

One of the uses for XP in these kind of suggestions is some form of bragging rights. The kind of things that do not confer any gameplay advantages, that just signify that "I'm better than you".

There are basically two kinds of bragging rights; the kind that are obvious, and the kind you can only see in the other player's profile.

Now, bragging rights that can only be seen in other players' profiles. The XP counter is also visible there. It already acts as a kind of bragging right. Making it more obvious than that would encourage people to, well, brag about it. The whole point of making them only visible in profiles is to make them less obtrusive.

As for obvious variants, I think they're obnoxious, obtrusive and useless. In general.

Functional Uses

The first problem with these is that there are characters with as much as 50,000XP stored. Playing for a couple of years does that. It's not that hard to fix that problem in the suggestion, though. But that leads me to the second problem; I don't think players who've just played longer should be stronger than others (other than what they already are because of skills). I like the fact that beyond a certain point, tactics are the only thing that make someone more or less effective than someone else. It promotes a more intelligent and varied style of playing.

The Bottomless Pit Problem and the Freedom of Choice

This is the biggest reason why I don't think XP should be usable after you have all the skills you want. Both bragging rights and functional uses usually share this problem.

Now, when a player starts the game, it's natural that their first goal is to get XP in order to get some skills. The "gotta get more XP" attitude becomes ingrained into their playing. However, there are a couple of points where you start to question that. The first and weakest is when you've bought all the obviously useful skills from your side and only skills like Tagging or Flailing Gesture remain from the skills of "your side" (and most new players play only one "side", very few play Dual Nature). The second is when you've bought all the skills from your side. The final is when you've bought every skill you want to buy (most people other than die-hard zombies will leave the Rot-tree unbought).

There are some questions you start asking when you reach these points in the game, because XP isn't as useful as it was. The questions that these situations present are as follows:

• What do I want to do with this character?
• Is there some other goal besides XP?
• What kind of things are there to do that don't give XP, or give very little?

Some keep playing the way they have, some start a new character, some think of new things to do. From these questions spawn the most diverse, interesting and fun ways of playing Urban Dead.

The problem in all its simplicity is that as long as there is something for players to spend XP on, they will not encounter these questions. The majority of players will go on with the "gotta get more XP" attitude without ever questioning it.

I don't really care what the players' answers are and how they continue to play (or don't continue), the important thing is that the questions get presented to them (by running out of things to buy with XP), and they get to choose for themselves how they want to play the game.

Summary

Some seem to think that the game ends when you've bought everything there is to buy, but in my opinion that's when the game really begins. The most fun in UD is after you can't use XP on anything anymore, when you're free from the grind and can do whatever you want without having to care if it gives you XP or not.

XP shouldn't be consumable. Anything you buy with it should be permanent, and there shouldn't be an infinite or even large amount of things you can buy with it.

Bragging rights already exist in the form of the XP counter.

Functional uses already exist in the form of skills.

What This Doesn't Mean

This doesn't mean that I'm against all uses of XP. New skills are fine by me. Even new uses of XP would be OK, but I can't see how anything other than skills can avoid falling into the problems mentioned above.

This doesn't mean that I'm against the style of play that only focuses on XP gain. Playing for XP is perfectly understandable and acceptable if you don't have all the necessary skills yet. After that, it's just a play-style much like any other. Some I don't like, some I do, but none of that matters as far as this is concerned. To each their own.