exponential XP growth rate in RPGs?

Runescape has the following experience formula, which is sort of exponential:



L is the level, and the summation is there because it includes the experience needed for all previous levels.

I wonder, how did they come up with it :o

Eternal Lands has this formula:

  for(i=1;i<120;i++)    {        if(i<=10)exp+=exp*40/100;        else        if(i<=20)exp+=exp*30/100;        else        if(i<=30)exp+=exp*20/100;        else        if(i<=40)exp+=exp*14/100;        else        if(i<=90)exp+=exp*7/100;        else exp+=exp*4/100;        exp_lev=exp;    }

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Original post by Lode Runescape has the following experience formula, which is sort of exponential: L is the level, and the summation is there because it includes the experience needed for all previous levels. I wonder, how did they come up with it :o

What does Floor mean?

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Original post by ender_341 What does Floor mean?

floor() just rounds a number to the lowest value. For example,
floor(7.99) will return 7.

Exponential growth rates are evil.

They cause a stall to progress. :(


Legends of Kesmai (defunct now.. killed by Electronic Arts) had that.

It took one player a year of constant casting of spells 8 hours a day to raise a single magic level.

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Original post by Maega Exponential growth rates are evil. They cause a stall to progress. :( Legends of Kesmai (defunct now.. killed by Electronic Arts) had that. It took one player a year of constant casting of spells 8 hours a day to raise a single magic level.

It depends if the experience returned from killing monsters also increases expotentially as the game progresses.

The point of it is that it always gets harder and harder to level so that the difference in level between occasional players and power levelers is only linear instead of exponential.

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Original post by _goat It depends if the experience returned from killing monsters also increases expotentially as the game progresses.

What would be the point of that? If both experience needed and experience gained increase exponentially, then what's the advantage over a linear increase?

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Original post by Kazgoroth Quote: Original post by _goat It depends if the experience returned from killing monsters also increases expotentially as the game progresses. What would be the point of that? If both experience needed and experience gained increase exponentially, then what's the advantage over a linear increase?

Because you get more XP from the monsters, duh ;)

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Original post by Lord Maz Quote: Original post by Kazgoroth Quote: Original post by _goat It depends if the experience returned from killing monsters also increases expotentially as the game progresses. What would be the point of that? If both experience needed and experience gained increase exponentially, then what's the advantage over a linear increase? Because you get more XP from the monsters, duh ;)

But the XP from monsters goes less exponential, so the difficulty is still growing exponentially :)

Question @ Raduprv: What is the initial value of exp?

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Original post by Kazgoroth What would be the point of that? If both experience needed and experience gained increase exponentially, then what's the advantage over a linear increase?

These formulas usually assume that the number of monsters of a suitable challenge you can kill in a given time period remains either constant or roughly linear. If you try to kill monsters less challenging, you're effectively penalized with a slower growth rate, since you have to spend more time killing more monsters while your less cowardly adventuring colleagues zoom to higher levels. In a strictly linear system, this isn't a problem for you, since you'll only spend a little more time between levels.

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Original post by Vesper Question @ Raduprv: What is the initial value of exp?

100

well in some games it doesn't get any real harder to level up....
FF tactics stays about the same.... ff7 has the rate rate till u hit around 70 and outclass all monsters
star ocean games only seem to get easyer the longer u play
...but for the most part mostly older rpg's had massive level grinds
worst level grind ever is a new game ragnarok online (newer-3years old)
I remember that once u hit level 40 or so u could play 10 hours of straight fighting and gain 1 level.....at level 70 it'd take a week

With FFTactics, the level system was effectively exponential, but thats because EXO was the dynamic variable, while the total requirement was only 100 per level. Of course, the enemies also got harder, so the game always seemed to follow a one level per battle or two battles formula.

Japanese RPGs, in general, are a linear summation. The distance to the next level is more than the distance to the next level, but never more than the total distance. Meaning, that if level 10 to 11 took 1200 points, level 11 to 12 would take maybr 1400, but you'll never see a 10 100 1000 10000 progression.

FFX-2 appears to be approximately exponential - playing through with 2 characters geting double exp (courtesy of Key to Success) from the first opportunity (something like 17 EXP in) the remaining character consistently lagged about 10-12 levels behind up to level 60 or so (as far as I played).

FF8 uses a constant XP/level, which made it take longer to level up initially, but makes the last few dozen levels fly by (there are places where each fight is approximately 1 level's worth of XP per character).

Of the two, I prefer the exponential system - it makes early levelling up faster, and makes the "ceiling" (the point where your characters are already on max HP, dealing max damage per hit, etc) less of an issue