...and here's why.

Attempting to "fix" bad roleplay surrounding the experience system simply won't work - it's OOC by its very nature, and as such, will always be vulnerable to poor roleplay. The follow/group system is the same way, and is accepted as a necessary evil to encourage cooperative gameplay.

Additionally, the level system, being a vital part of playerkilling mechanics, really must be transparent to the players in order to be viable - the reason, I suspect, why they chose to unhide the levels in the 'who' list (though that was several years ago now). The rationale as I understood it was that new players weren't familiar enough with the titles to discern player's levels, and with the rapidly increasing number of classes at the time, it made the game extremely unfriendly to newbies (see Theerkla's post below).

Player level is currently visible in the 'group' command, in addition to 'who', and under your system those would have to be done away with as well.

If you could count on everyone being an experienced player, I would be all for it - but the fact is, experienced players aren't going to be the ones annoying you anyway.

I still think your best response is a mild, IC rebuke of the offending player. If enough people actually say something, they'll get the message. Too often I think experienced players just throw up their hands and ignore it.

T

People who substitute "grains of sand", "kobolds" and "stones" for individual unites of hp or xp are just role-playing poorly. It doesn't *have* to be that way. I usually break it down into a number of mobs, e.g. "I suspect my guildmaster will consider me worthy of promotion should we slay another ten trolls."

Removing xp value would cause some problems. For one, I'd have no way to evaluate when it's time to leave a particular ranking area. I could be getting 10 xp/mob and never know it. Not being able to know how close you are to ranking is also inconvenient, albeit in an ooc sort of way. Maybe I want to get that last rank before I quit for the night, etc.

I could support this with the following changes:

1. You still get an echo when you rank.

2. Mob kills give a "chunked" version of xp. That is to say, "You learn UNSPEAKABLE things from this mob," or "You learn absolutely nothing from vanquishing so weak a foe."

3. XP TNL is expressed as a percentage, e.g. you're 50% of the way towards your next rank. After a mob death maybe you're 125% of the way towards your next rank. Etc.

I am a hardcore number cruncher.. I do trend analysis on my character data, comparing to past characters, etc..
Though I do like this idea and how it presents itself.

It would be nice to make this an "option" and possibly have it also changeable at higher levels (like things are now.. only knowing % until you get high enough to be able to see the numbers)

I have always been irked by people saying "I'm going to rank soon, or x amount of ranks" etc..
All they are doing is replacing "rank" with "level" and I thought that was lame.

(Rank is valid for warriors, easily, because they can have ranks or rankings within their guilds, thats why I change things up with the "name" used in other guilds)

Warriors: Rank
Mages: Ascension
Paladin: Improved in the eyes of the heavens
etc, you know how it goes.

I think this idea kicks ass but i do have a niggling feeling of doubt in the back of my mind.

Is a nagging suspicion that this might turn away new players, especially ones coming from other MUDS.