"Ranking" within a game

[deadonarrival]

(Apologies if this should be somewhere else - it's about PHP, but not actual code)

 

Hey all

 

I'm making a small game (RPG style).

 

The actual coding I'm finding okay, but the methods are unfamiliar to me.

 

I've basically run through a few ideas, and was wondering if anyone can help me out with the rank system with some brainstorming.

 

I'm thinking of using the pow function to help with rank stuff, so that instead of each rank being twice as hard as the last, it's a power of the difficulty.

 

That was badly phrased... here's what I mean in a description. Say I have 5 ranks, and I want each rank to be progressively harder. I've thought about using the pow function to take their current rank, cube it (or whatever) then that's the experience they need to have for the next rank, but this is, I feel, too simple. I need a way of easily using numbers such as rank to decide how much experience a person needs for the next rank, and to use a similar thing for the RPG elements of the game (such as crimes/fights)

 

Does anyone have any experience with similar systems they could share with me?

 

Currently I'm using the following to calculate experience gained from crimes (where crime is the crime they chose from a list of approx 5/6)

$exp = pow($crime,4);

 

Thanks

~DOA

(Apologies for the lack of a single answerable question to this... I'm really just looking for any thoughts anyone may have)

<3

[MasterACE14]

Take a look at this Free MMORPG text based game. Dragon Knight

 

The game is Called Dragon Knight and it uses a MySQL database for pretty much everything.

Levels, Weapons, items, monsters. etc etc

 

The way I rank Players in my games is by normally their experience, the different character class's level up at different rates so the most accurate way to rank everyone is by their experience.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Regards ACE

[deadonarrival]

I won't have different character classes - I was just trying to work out what sort of numbers experience should be.

 

Obviously level 1 starts at 0 experience, but what sort of values should I have for each rank - how many "clicks" should a user expect between ranks?

 

Say I have a very good way of ranking which can be done once a day, and a very bad way of ranking which can be done every two minutes, what sort of exp should each give, and what numbers of exp points should I use for ranks?

 

This is the main thing I don't understand

[MasterACE14]

I dont understand what you mean by "Clicks"?

 

But a good way to work out experience required for each level is increase each experience required by each level, by increasing it by a percentage. or by a pattern.

 

for example.

 

level 1 - exp required 0

level 2 - exp required 10

level 3 - exp required 20

level 4 - exp required 30

 

Increasing the exp required by 10 each time. But the problem with this is it doesn't make it harder for players level up the stronger they get. so you need to do it something like this.

 

level 1 - exp required 0

level 2 - exp required 10

level 3 - exp required 20

level 4 - exp required 40

level 5 - exp required 80

level 6 - exp required 160

 

and you just keep doubling. But probably the best most used way is doubling and a percentage increase.

 

so for level 2 you need 10 exp, plus 5%, and level 3 you need 20 exp plus 5% or you could increase the percent by 1 each time, so you could do level 2 exp required 10 plus 5% and then level 3 exp required 20 plus 6% and so on.

 

I hope that gives you a better understanding. if not you could always google "levels" for different MMORPGs, like WoW, Lineage, even runescape lol.

 

Regards ACE