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[Auning]

This is a pretty bad issue, in adventure mode. Once one has decent stats and armor through normal gameplay, simply gather as many small animals as you can. Repeatedly spam sit and stand, and your evasion/mitigation skills go through the roof. At one point, I was able to get approximately 20-30 cats and dogs all attacking me, doing nothing. Shortly after, my dodge, armor use, and blocker skills were through the roof. At around 80,000~ exp to bring it up another level of legendary. There's also the throwing/archery powerleveling methods that everyone knows about. It just all seems a bit too cheap.

With these shenanigans, one can easily get a character that is almost impossible to kill. Get an army of several hundred undead as a necromancer, and become a vampire. On top of that, you have unrealistic stats resulting in you being nearly impossible to hit. Any fix to this would probably fix danger rooms as well. It doesn't seem too high priority for some reason.. One might say "just don't abuse it." but the problem is, is it begins happening through normal gameplay. If you decide to start a murderous rampage through several villages, chances are you'll have massive crowds of citizens attacking you, doing nothing. This shouldn't skill up your already legendary stats at some point.

Perhaps each skill increase is tied in with the difficulty of whatever you're doing, as it is with melee. If you're repeatedly throwing stuff at the ground, it should not increase your skill beyond dabbling. The higher the throwing skill, the further your target needs to be and be hit at for skill increase. For example, it may look like this.

Throwing
________
Dabbling - EXP From throwing anything at anything at all
Novice - EXP from a thrown object hitting any alive target within 1 square distance
Adequate - EXP from a thrown object hitting any alive target within 2 square distance
etc... not exact numbers, but to give you an idea.

Dodger
______
Dabbling - Gets exp from dodging an attack from a dabbling or better swordsman, axeman, striker, biter, etc., exp scales with your dodging level compared to theirs.
Novice - Gets exp from dodging an attack from a novice or better swordsman, axeman, striker, biter, etc., exp scales with your dodging level compared to theirs.
...and so on.

To make it be possible to reach legendary in some of these, there would have to be some sort of specific scaling changes to the formula, but I'm not good at making it reasonably balanced. Similar skills would work the same way. For example, Shield User and Armor user (in the context of taking hits).

[Starver]

I don't numberchase, so much, but isn't the idea already that the effective XP needed to get from one level to the next gets geometrically larger?

I've a feeling I might be wrong.

There's a MUD I play that certainly does that (in fact, I think it's exponential increases) and doesn't cap in any way like Leg+5 does...  And while there's long-term players at a high level, not only do they get decreased 'harvest' of XP from those that they attack or exploit, of a given level (by using some obscure and only somewhat-spaded assessment of equivalence), but they're pretty much assured of having some enemies (PC or NPC) out there whose skills in the relevant attack or other active skill rival their own choice of hyper-advanced defend or resistance skills.  Or vice-versa.  So you're welcome to spend time increasing any given skill to level 900, 1700, or higher.  Not only does it take more effort but it just means that you've got a different set of dangers... and at the same time you're still vulnerable (or not dangerous) to situations requiring different skills.  (Sword skills do not prevent drowning, swimming skills do not prevent being hit by a poisoned dart, dodging skills do not prevent being surprised by an ambush, etc...)

But I'm probably misremembering the mechanics (that I have not recently paid attention to), probably none of this is useful.  Still even deities should be vulnerable, and (especially with the lack of "choose what your XP helps increase" option in DF (which may be a 'flaw' in the reality of the MUD I mention) the general concept of "the more experienced that you are, the more you have to work to get up to the next level" is at least a decent start if it doesn't already happen.

[sockless]

To be honest, I don't think that Toady is hugely worried about exploits, especially considering his tolerance for DFhack.

If you don't want to use exploits, don't use them, if you want to use them, use them. The game isn't an MMO, if some people use exploits, it doesn't affect the rest of us.

I do like the idea though, it's like the concept that you can't get better by playing people worse than you, such as in chess and whatnot.

[Stormcloudy]

All I'm saying, is that repetition is the key to mastery.

Can't you imagine a target you're trying to hit? Or a bug or something? And if you're avoiding an attack you are still dodging.

Maybe skill gain could drop the longer you perform an action? That way while grinding you'd at least have to have some variety.

[slothen]

so if I'm a novice dodger and I'm being attacked by a pack of wolves with no natural attacking skills, I won't gain any exp if I dodge their attacks for an hour?  Boo.  This suggestion is kind of a broad one to completely chain when and how exp is assigned.  Not necessary imo.

[NW_Kohaku]

Maybe the wolves should gain skill as well, then?

Wolf cubs are trained in how to attack their prey by older wolves - they even grasp old deer antlers in their mouths and get the cubs to attack them until they learn to attack as a team and flank the deer antlers to take down their prey.  It's not like wolves learning to become better hunters is unrealistic.

Anyway, when you boil it down to what the problem really is, there are two major mechanisms at work, here -



1. The game uses an experience-through-use model.  (The model is standard sub-geometric growth which starts at 500 xp, and increases 100 xp per level, which comes out to ((L+4)^2 + L+4) * 50 - 1000 XP for target level L.) 

By definition, this means that you are going to have people powergrinding use to get their characters to "level up".  That's just the same as people who make countless iron daggers in Skyrim to hit 100 smithing, or who let a rat gnaw their shield.  Likewise, if you create a "punching bag" and just sit there punching it to gain punching skill. 

A game designer that purposefully chooses to do this purposefully chooses to reward players for taking those actions, "Realism" or not.  And frankly, standing there punching a punching bag to get better at punching does have some realism to it.



2.  The game uses very, very simple mechanics to do things.  You can't set up a macro to buy iron and leather straps and make tons of daggers in Skyrim, but picking up a clod of dirt and throwing it is just boring repetitive macro-worthy stuff. 

If something is THAT boring and repetitive, then you might as well make it a macro, because it adds nothing to the game to make a player have to sit there and throw 967 dirt clods just to hit the arbitrary throwing skill cap.  Sure, less people would do it, but that doesn't solve the problem, really.  It just makes the people who are willing to do it unhappy for having done the grind, and the people who don't do it unhappy that the other people got a reward for a grind they didn't do.

[Belteshazzar]

I'm reminded slightly of the days when aquatic animals would occasionally train swimming... which could cause some downright scary stat gain.

[JackOSpades]

yes but how much of an exploit is it when the Next Archer you come across is still going to OHKO you with a shot directly to your brain?

Or for a differant take on the matter.

the Ideal way to combat the Issue of power leveling Isn't to keep players from power leveling but to provide appropriate challenges to players of ALL skill levels.
I'd like to see some Dungeon crawls (procedurally generated of course.) filled with traps and puzzles in addition to the monsters, ALL designed to Kill challenge highly skilled adventurers.

[UHaulDwarf]

Grinding is boring enough. I have played Wizard101 and the only way to gain meaningful exp is to have longer battles, which is a chore.
Given that there are no other ways of leveling up skills; Making grinding unfruitful would only make adventure mode more unbalanced, not less.

[Auning]

This is balanced? As you can see, this was done with run of the mill equipment, no candy. I wiped out the entire human civilization in about 4 hours, taking only a bruise to the right hand throughout the entire experience. That can't be right.

Stats

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Starver]

My only complaint with that is the Leftpondian grammar.  ("Two thousand and Eight Notable Kills" would suit me better.)  But, I have also had to deal with the likes of "Armor" instead of "Armour".  Due to Toady being one of those rebellious colonials, I suppose he is entitled to such a little eccentricity.

[EnigmaticHat]

so if I'm a novice dodger and I'm being attacked by a pack of wolves with no natural attacking skills, I won't gain any exp if I dodge their attacks for an hour?  Boo.  This suggestion is kind of a broad one to completely chain when and how exp is assigned.  Not necessary imo.

The problem is that the way experience is assigned is just broken.  Its not even a "you can choose to exploit this or ignore it" thing at this point.  If you sneak everywhere for a week you become legendary at no cost, and there's really no non-exploity way to train sneak if you don't start with it.  Punching an immobile groundhog conveys as much experience per hit as swordfighting a legendary hero.  Slaughtering civilians is greatly more practical in terms of gaining combat experience than killing bandits who fight back.  The list goes on.  Even if you are (as I do) specifically not trying to exploit the system, its impossible not to notice.

There are two problems here:
The training situation is completely unrealistic (see above) in a game that places as lot of priority on simulating these sort of things.
The system punishes the player by granting them an in game benefit (experience) at an out of game cost (real life time and effort).  Repeatedly picking up and throwing a rock is really tedious for the player, but in game is massively practical and costs nothing (including any significant amount of time).  Comparing shooting a bow at bandits (without using stealth, since that's basically an exploit as of now); you actually train way slower and there's a significant risk involved, but its way more engaging.

Now I agree with you that flat not gaining experience when fighting someone less skilled than you is a poor solution, but I completely disagree that a broad change to the way experience is granted isn't necessary.

I have two changes I would suggest to the way training works:

Firstly: Punching a wounded groundhog for three in-game hours is tedious and annoying to set up, and in universe shouldn't provide any more experience than just hitting a punching bag.  So why can't you just tell your character to hit a punching bag for an hour?  Or hell, tell them to train for a year or a decade.  We already have fast travel, quick waiting in the short term and plans to be able pass time quickly in the long term.  The need for food/shelter, the fact that dangerous situations (wars, personal conflicts, monsters, famines, plauges) should emerge over time and the need to fufill societal duties should all provide a balancing factor on this trade of time for experience, as they do with real life training.  And it would skip the boring parts of the story.

Secondly: There should be a baseline of skill gain rate that is training a skill with no factors that make it difficult: attacking an inanimate object, sneaking when there is no one to hide from, or any situation where there is no cost, risk, or unusually great exertion.  This rate should be the same regardless of whether controling your character directly or just skipping time as above, and it should take years to reach grand-master at this rate.  Any use of a skill should start at that baseline and be modified up by difficulty.  So attacking a completely defenseless enemy would be the slow baseline (thus you might as well just hit a training dummy), killing a peasant would be faster but still give mediocre gains even if you drew it out, and sparring an experienced mentor would give very rapid skill gains.  Ideally there would also be some sort of bonus for using combat skills against inherently dangerous creatures like dragons.

I'm not sure if risk should factor into this equation; on one hand, from a balance perspective, it makes all sort of sense that you should gain more from a real fight where your character might die than sparring which has little risk, but on the other hand I'm not sure that's realistic.  And then there's the whole "so I learn less if my enemy is using a wooden sword/trying to be non-lethal, even if they are just as hard to fight?" issue.  Maybe simulating adrenaline in dangerous situations would work, since you could perform beyond your usual abilities and thus train faster.  Or maybe we could simulate fear as a penalty for inexperienced combatants and then lessen the fear penalty as they've experienced dangerous situations.

In summary: scale training rate more by difficulty of action as well is in-game cost and risk, take a long time to train with easy actions, allow player to time skip over basic/repetative training actions to compensate.

Well, I guess that's my first huge rant on this forum.  A lot of that didn't have much to do with slothen's comment, sorry.  Hopefully that was all coherent...

[Auning]

This.
Also, I kinda like the idea of the training through a fast travel-esque mechanism. It just needs to be not TOO rewarding, and it should be relatively costly. Perhaps it uses up quantities of food and water as you need it, as well as aging your character (naturally). For example, training wrestling for 10 years would use 500 units of food, and 500 units of drinkable liquid. This gives reason to actually buy large quantities of food, and more reason to make money. However, as it is, there are tons of free food just lying all over the place in houses. This would need to be fixed. The only other problem would be vampires and necromancers. They wouldn't need to eat or drink.. Perhaps they would get interrupted by angry groups of people that are trying to kill them for the abominations that they are, just like ambushes, etc.

Otherwise, if this mechanic isn't to be implemented, I still agree with the other points made. Difficulty of the task should greatly scale with every skill and attribute. Essentially, risk and reward needs to be addressed.