News Fable 3 has no experience, health bar

XP isn't a feature, it's a means to an end. Many people forget that all an RPG is at it's roots is an interactive story. XP and leveling up was just a way of showing progression of your character's strength. As much as I think Peter talks mainly with his behind in charge, I do think he is right, XP isn't necessary, and even more so with today's games.

Most games now have levelled enemies, when a character goes up in levels, the enemies become more powerful or are replaced with more powerful enemies to match the character's level so the player doesn't ever feel like he isn't challenged (in theory).

I'll give you three examples of recent games that do this.

Dragon Age and Mass Effect (1 & 2) use levelled enemies, the enemies stay the same but they have more health and do more damage.

Then there's Oblivion, in this, the enemies level with you to a certain point, then are replaced with a more powerful enemy. For example, a wolf would level up with you, but when you reach a certain point, the wolves are replaced with mountain lions.

The thing with these games is they're non linear RPGs, in Dragon Age they couldn't make the Magi Tower have high level enemies while Orzimmar has low level ones because that would completely defy the point of the non-linearity. Yeah, you could go to the Magi Tower, but you'd die, that's no different than having those Anima walls in Assassins Creed.

So what really is the point in the levelling up system in these games? It doesn't really do anything, whoopty do, I levelled up....and very little has changed, you might have a new ability or two but you don't need a XP system to do that. The fights are still roughly the same difficulty, so really the levelling system no longer achieves it's original purpose and it's just something that people put in RPGs because that's what you have in RPGs.

Take away XP and you also take away things like unnecessary grinding which is just really something put in there to pad out a game.

 

Therein lies the problem with Fable 3 - the cure to oversimplification isn't further simplification! Face it - a lot of RPG players are nerds. The hardcore RPG crowd likes doing complicated mental arithmetic, likes planning three dungeons and a boss fight ahead, and definitely does not like a game that says "It's OK, I'll do all the hard stuff for you. All you need to do is follow the glowy trail and push buttons when I tell you to."

Fix'd

 

I guess you can draw two conclusions here, either the average gamer is an idiot, or the system was not properly explained leaving people struggling to understand it. By the sounds of it, it's the former, but I haven't played Fable 2 yet so I can't really comment.

 

I was a bit disapointed I didn't get awarded any XP for killing him though........

 

I'm hardcore and will only play games that will allow me to kill other hardcore people, right now that is Star Trek Online, which B-T needs to review in the next week to retain any semblance of being a gaming review publication.