What is xp in games?

An experience point (often abbreviated as exp or XP) is a unit of measurement used in some tabletop role-playing games (RPGs) and role-playing video games to quantify a player character's life experience and progression through the game. Experience points are generally awarded for the completion of missions, overcoming obstacles and opponents, and successful role-playing.[1]

In many RPGs, characters start as fairly weak and untrained. When a sufficient amount of experience is obtained, the character "levels up", achieving the next stage of character development. Such an event usually increases the character's statistics, such as maximum health, magic and strength, and may permit the character to acquire new abilities or improve existing ones. Levelling up may also give the character access to more challenging areas or items.

In some role-playing games, particularly those derived from Dungeons & Dragons, experience points are used to improve characters in discrete experience levels; in other games, such as GURPS and the World of Darkness games, experience points are spent on specific abilities or attributes chosen by the player.

In most games, as the difficulty of the challenge increases, the experience rewarded for overcoming it also increases. As players gain more experience points, the amount of experience needed to gain abilities typically increases. Alternatively, some games keep the number of experience points per level constant but progressively lower the experience gained for the same tasks as the character's level increases. Thus, as the player character strengthens from gaining experience, they are encouraged to accept new tasks that are commensurate with their improved abilities in order to advance.

In games derived from Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), an accumulation of a sufficient number of experience points (XP) increases a character's "level", a number that represents a character's overall skill and experience. To "level" or "level up" means to gain enough XP to reach the next level. By gaining a level, a character's abilities or stats will increase, making the character stronger and able to accomplish more difficult tasks, including safely battling stronger enemies, gaining access to more powerful abilities (such as spells or combat techniques), and to make, fix or disable more complex mechanical devices, or resolve increasingly difficult social challenges.

Typically, levels are associated with a character class, and many systems allow combinations of classes, allowing a player to customize how their character develops.

Some systems that use a level-based experience system also incorporate the ability to purchase specific traits with a set amount of experience; for example, D&D 3rd Edition bases the creation of magical items around a system of experience expenditure (known as burning xp) and also uses a system of feat selection which closely matches the advantages of systems such as GURPS or the Hero System. The d20 System also introduced the concept of prestige classes which bundle sets of mechanics, character development and requirements into a package which can be "leveled" like an ordinary class.

Some games have a level cap, or a limit of levels available. For example, in the online game RuneScape, no player can currently get higher than level 120 which needs a combined 104,273,167 experience points to gain, nor can any one skill gain more than 200 million experiences. Some games have a dynamic level cap, where the level cap is dependent upon the levels of the average player (so it gradually increases).

In some systems, such as the classic tabletop role-playing games Traveller, Call of Cthulhu and Basic Role-Playing, and the role-playing video games Dungeon Master,[2] Final Fantasy II, The Elder Scrolls,[3] the SaGa series,[4] and Grandia series,[5] progression is based on increasing individual statistics (skills, rank and other features) of the character, and is not driven by the acquisition of (general) experience points. The skills and attributes are made to grow through exercised use. Some authors believe that activity-based progression encourages tedious grinding processes, like intentionally taking damage and attacking allied characters to increase health in Final Fantasy II.[6]

Free-form advancement is used by many role-playing systems including GURPS, Hero System or the World of Darkness series. It allows the player to select which skills to advance by allocating "points". Each character attribute is assigned a price to improve, so for example it might cost a character 2 points to raise an archery skill one notch, 10 points to raise overall dexterity by one, or it might cost 20 points to learn a new magic spell.

Players are typically free to spend points however they choose, which greatly increases the control that a player has over the character's development, but also usually causes players to find that complexity increases as well. Some games therefore simplify character creation and advancement by suggesting packages or templates of pre-selected ability sets, so for example a player could have their character become an "investigator" by purchasing a package deal which includes many skills and abilities, rather than buying them each separately.

A cash-in experience advancement system uses experience points to "purchase" such character advancements as class levels, skill points, new skills, feats or increasing saving throw bonuses or base attribute points each of which has a set cost in experience points with set limits on the maximum bonuses that can be purchased at a given time usually once per game session. Once experience points are used thus they are "spent" and are erased from the character record or marked as spent and cannot be used again. Final Fantasy XIII and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay are examples of games that use a cash-in advancement system.

Some games use advancement systems which combine elements from two or more of the above types. For example, in the third edition of Dungeons & Dragons, whenever a level is gained in a character class, it provides a number of skill points (the exact number is calculated based on the class and the character's intelligence statistic), which can be spent to raise various skills. Character level (generally the sum of a character's total levels in all classes) is used to calculate how high skills can be raised, when an ability score can be raised and when a character can gain new feats (a class of special abilities which include special attacks, proficiencies in various weapons and bonuses on the dice rolls used to determine the outcome of various actions) and how many experience points are needed to advance in level. In Ragnarok Online, experience points are divided into two categories: base experience and job experience. Gaining base experience increases a character's base level, which is used to calculate a character's maximum HP and SP, increasing base level also provides points which can be spent to increase stats such as strength, agility and intelligence. Gaining job experience increases a character's job level, each job level provides a skill point which can be spent in the job's skill tree to gain a new ability, such as a spell, special attack or passive bonus, or improve an existing ability.

Since many early role-playing video games are derived from Dungeons & Dragons,[7] most use a level-based experience system.

In many games, characters must obtain a minimum level to perform certain actions, such as wielding a particular weapon, entering a restricted area, or earning the respect of a non-player character. Some games use a system of "character levels", where higher-level characters hold an absolute advantage over those of lower level. In these games, statistical character management is usually kept to a minimum. Other games use a system of "skill levels" to measure advantages in terms of specific aptitudes, such as weapon handling, spell-casting proficiency, and stealthiness. These games allow the players to customize their characters to a greater extent.

Some games, particularly among MUDs and MMORPGs, place a limit on the experience a character gains from a single encounter or challenge, to reduce the effectiveness of power-leveling.

"Perks" are special bonuses that video game players can add to their characters to give special abilities. The term refers to the general usage of "perk" as an abbreviation of "perquisite". Perks are permanent rather than temporary and are progressively unlocked through experience points. The first video game to use the term "perks" to refer to such a mechanic was the 1997 role-playing video game Fallout.

Besides RPGs, perks have been used in various other video games in recent times, including first-person shooters such as Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007),[8] Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009), and Killing Floor (2009), as well as action games such as Metal Gear Online (2008).

"Remorting" (also known as "rebirth", "ascending/ascension", "reincarnating", or "new game plus") is a game mechanic in some role-playing games whereby, once the player character reaches a specified level limit, the player can elect to start over with a new version of the character. The bonuses that are given are dependent on several factors, which generally involve the stats of the character before the reincarnation occurs. The remorting character generally loses all levels, but gains an advantage that was previously unavailable, usually access to different races, avatars, classes, skills, or otherwise inaccessible play areas within the game. A symbol often identifies a remorted character.

The term "remort" comes from MUDs,[9] in some of which players may become immortal characters—administrative staff—simply by advancing to the maximum level. These users are generally expected to distance themselves from gameplay, and interaction with players may be severely limited. When an immortal chooses to vacate his or her position to resume playing the game—usually from level one just as with any new character—he or she is said to have remorted, "becoming mortal again".[10][11] A MUD called Arcane Nites, formerly Nitemare, claims to have created the first remort system and coined the term.[12][unreliable source]

Grinding refers to the process of repeating one specific activity over and over. This is done, for example, by repeatedly participating in challenges, quests, tasks and events which reward experience points for performing repetitive, often menial challenges. This definition can also be used in multi-player games, but it is typically displaced by a much more charged meaning. A term intended to describe this style of play without pejorative connotation is optimization, also known as "XP farming".

Power-leveling is using the help of another, stronger player to level a character more quickly than is possible alone.

Games, that allow several characters participating in a single event (such as battle or quest completion), implement various methods of determining how and when experience gets shared between participants. These methods include: only last-hitting character, whose hit killed the enemy, getting experience (as in Fire Emblem series); unconditionally sharing experience among characters (as in D&D system); and giving experience based on each character's actions (as in Final Fantasy Tactics). In some online games, it is possible to join a group and gain experience, loot or other rewards, while providing little or no contribution to the group. This type of behaviour is referred to as leeching, particularly when it is done without the permission of other group members. In games which allow players to gain rewards by kill stealing, this is also considered a form of leeching. This is extremely common in games such as Dungeon Defenders, in which all players receive the same rewards regardless of their contributions.

Some players of online games use automated programs known as bots to grind or leech for them in order to progress with minimal effort.[13] This practice often violates the terms of service. Bots are also commonly used in commercial operations in order to powerlevel a character, either to increase the sale value of the account, or to allow the character to be used for commercial gold farming.

An experience point (often abbreviated as exp or XP) is a unit of measurement used in some tabletop role-playing games (RPGs) and role-playing video games to quantify a player character's life experience and progression through the game.

Creating engaging online learning experiences is no easy task. We should know. We’ve made it our mission to wage war on dull online learning. Luckily, gamification can help us to turn the tables. And one of the most powerful game mechanics in our arsenal is Experience Points (XP).

If you’ve played any role-playing game, video game or board game before, there’s a good chance you’ll be familiar with Experience Points.

But in this article, we’ll be pushing deeper. We’ll look at the origin of XP, how points are typically used and how they can be deployed to serve your learning goals.

If you make it to the end of this article, you’ll earn 50XP. So, let’s get started!

In most games, Experience Points act as a measure of how well the player has mastered the virtual environment. More points means more mastery. And mastery feels good!

The Oxford Dictionary defines XP as ‘points that you earn in a computer game for completing tasks, collecting items, etc.’

But there’s no reason to limit Experience Points to computer games. They can be applied to all manner of circumstances to help drive engagement.

This definition also fails to capture a few important concepts that are inherently linked to Experience Points.

Difficulty Weighting: Overcoming obstacles helps us to earn XP. But there’s more to it than that. After all, we get more Experience Points for overcoming tougher challenges. This helps us to understand the level of difficulty associated with each task. This kind of pre-emptive feedback is a useful tool for driving decision-making.

Compound Interest: Another important quality of XP is its cumulative nature. It builds over time. In other words, it won’t disappear after you’ve obtained it. As you complete tasks, your XP tally will grow. Without this quality, collecting Experience Points wouldn’t be half as addictive. It also makes the next characteristic possible.

Levelling Up: Experience points and Levels often have a direct relationship. Typically, each level will have an associated XP target. Once the user hits this target, they’ll level up. They’ll then be set a new target. This is a great way to mark your progress.

Limiting Access: Experience points can also be used to limit access to certain areas of the game world. For instance, you may need to have a certain number of points (or be a certain level) in order to access new content. This is useful for breaking up the user journey and controlling the difficulty of available tasks.

Cashing In: Experience points are a unit of measurement. In this sense, they have a set value. This means they can be traded in for other items. In role-playing games, you might trade your XP for items or new skills. In learning and development, you could trade your Experience Points for real-world rewards.

Point systems have been used in games for almost as long as games have existed. After all, there has to be some way of keeping track of who’s winning and losing.

However, we have David Arneson and Gary Gygax to thank for the creation and popularisation of full-fledged Experience Points systems. Arneson and Gygax are known as the fathers of role-playing games for good reason.

Back in 1974, they worked on a fantasy war game called Blackmoor. Following playtests, Arneson and Gygax added Experience Points ‘to allow people to reach higher levels’.

Later that year, Arneson and Gygax would release Dungeons and Dragons — arguably the most influential game of all time. D&D utilised the same Experience Points system that they had introduced in Blackmoor. In doing so, it brought the concept to a much wider audience.

Since then, Experience Points have been deployed in some of gaming’s biggest franchises. This includes Final Fantasy, Call of Duty, Pokémon, The Elder Scrolls, Fortnite, World of Warcraft and many others.

They’re used in tabletop role-playing games, board games, achievement and trophy systems and many other places. You could even argue that modern loyalty schemes (like air miles) are based on the concept of Experience Points.

Now that you’re an Experience Points expert, let’s move onto the world of learning and development.

As an engagement engine, gamification is remarkably effective in a number of contexts. The world of learning and development is no different. After all:

However, game mechanics are not a silver bullet solution. You can’t add XP to your learning system and expect instant engagement from your learners. To produce the best results, you need a proper strategy.

With that in mind, here are eight tips to help you get more from your Experience Points:

Experience points are a unit of measurement. This means they hold value. As a result, they can be used to direct your learners and incentivise the right kind of activity.

You should use this motivational force to drive progress through your online learning environment. As a result, your training content becomes the equivalent of a quest objective in a video game.

Rather than tasking users with collecting a Drakefire Amulet or defeating twelve Murlocs, you’re asking them to actively engage with your content. As a result, they should earn XP.

As learners progress (and engage more), their point tally should increase. Eventually, they should level up and earn access to new experiences and the opportunity to earn even more XP. Thus the cycle begins afresh!

Adding XP to your content is a good start. But the joy of earning Experience Points shouldn’t be limited to formal training completion. Some learning management systems (including Growth Engineering LMS) will let you add XP to other platform interactions.

As an admin, you can decide which behaviours you want to encourage, reward and celebrate. For instance, you could:

This will encourage your learners to explore and deepen their engagement. Your ultimate goal should be to create a learning culture you are proud of!

Free Resources: The Ultimate Guide To Gamification In Online Learning Download Now!

According to the 70:20:10 model, formal training only accounts for 10% of all learning intake. As a result, informal learning experiences have to pick up the slack and generate the remaining 90%. A big part of this comes from knowledge sharing and social learning.

If your learning system includes social features, then why not use XP to encourage activity? For example, you could offer:

You could even have a moderator or learning administrator provide bonus XP for particularly helpful posts. That way you’re encouraging quality over quantity!

This one’s important. Assigning consistent, meaningful ‘weighting’ to XP on your learning system is paramount to success.

Weighting refers to the relative value or amount of XP awarded for each action performed within the learning environment. The output (or reward) should always match the input (the effort exerted).

What’s wrong with this picture?

The first two examples seem simple enough. After all, completing an eLearning unit is harder than creating a social post (in most cases). However, downloading a PDF is not 10x harder than creating a social post or 5x harder than completing an eLearning unit. The weighting is off.

Regardless of how much XP you offer, what’s important is consistency. It ensures that Experience Points remain meaningful and prevents your learners from becoming disengaged.

Experience points aren’t purely about making learners feel good. The accumulation of XP helps admins to identify learner engagement patterns.

In other words, you can use XP to identify who’s interacting with your LMS and who isn’t. Those with high point totals are your top performers. Those with lower scores may need more support or encouragement. Consider this an engagement red flag!

Once you identify a pattern, you can do something about it. You can celebrate your top performers. You can provide guidance to those who are struggling. And you can also refine your programme in line with the data. Not bad, right?

Further to the above point, XP is a simple way to identify internal expertise. After all, you can use point tallies to spot potential subject matter experts.

If you’ve set up your learning programme in the right way, learners with the highest XP scores are likely to be the most knowledgeable. Whilst you may want to verify their expertise through an assessment or an interview, this is a good starting point.

Once identified, you can then use your platform to showcase their expertise. For example, Growth Engineering LMS provides an Experts Area where SMEs can solicit questions. Their answers can then be made public for everyone to view.

This creates a healthy stockpile of information and prevents knowledge silos from forming.

Experience points help to generate intrinsic motivation. This is the kind of motivation that comes from within. It’s linked to self-actualisation, a sense of competence and task accomplishment. After all, XP is a clear marker of our progress.

But what if Experience Points could also hold extrinsic motivational value? In this case, the reward exists outside of ourselves. It’s usually linked to money, status, reward or prizes.

To do this, you could allow your learners to trade the XP they’ve earned for real-world rewards. For instance, our Reward Centre lets users ‘cash in’ their virtual rewards (XP and Badges) for something tangible. This could include:

What you pick is up to you. As long as they have perceived value to your learners, you can use rewards to increase engagement across your platform.

A good gamification strategy doesn’t just rely on one game mechanic. You’ve got plenty to pick from, so don’t be parsimonious.

Your Experience Points shouldn’t exist in a vacuum. They should interact with other game mechanics within your system to create a cohesive experience. For instance:

This helps to tie your strategy together and drives a deeper sense of meaning. The kind of meaning that fuels purpose and generates real results.

You made it to the end of the article. Here’s 50XP!

More importantly, you now know what Experience Points are and how to deploy them successfully within an online learning environment.

In many RPGs, characters start as fairly weak and untrained. When a sufficient amount of experience is obtained, the character "levels up", achieving the next stage of character development. Such an event usually increases the character's statistics, such as maximum health, magic and strength, and may permit the character to acquire new abilities or improve existing ones. Leveling up may also give the character access to more challenging areas or items.

In some role-playing games, particularly those derived from Dungeons & Dragons, experience points are used to improve characters in discrete experience levels; in other games, such as GURPS and the World of Darkness games, experience points are spent on specific abilities or attributes chosen by the player.

In most games, as the difficulty of the challenge increases, the experience rewarded for overcoming it also increases. As players gain more experience points, the amount of experience needed to gain abilities typically increases. Alternatively, games keep the amount of experience points per level constant, but progressively lower the experience gained for the same tasks as the character's level increases. Thus, as the player character strengthens from gaining experience, they are encouraged to accept new tasks that are commensurate with their improved abilities in order to advance.

In games derived from Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), an accumulation of a sufficient number of experience points (XP) increases a character's "level", a number that represents a character's overall skill and experience. To "level" or "level up" means to gain enough XP to reach the next level. By gaining a level, a character's abilities or stats will increase, making the character stronger and able to accomplish more difficult tasks, including safely battling stronger enemies, gaining access to more powerful abilities (such as spells or combat techniques), and to make, fix or disable more complex mechanical devices, or resolve increasingly difficult social challenges.

Typically levels are associated with a character class, and many systems allow combinations of classes, allowing a player to customize how their character develops.

Some systems that use a level-based experience system also incorporate the ability to purchase specific traits with a set amount of experience; for example, D&D 3rd Edition bases the creation of magical items around a system of experience expenditure (known as burning xp) and also uses a system of feat selection which closely matches the advantages of systems such as GURPS or the Hero System. The d20 System also introduced the concept of prestige classes which bundle sets of mechanics, character development and requirements into a package which can be "leveled" like an ordinary class.

Some games have a level cap, or a limit of levels available. For example, in the online game RuneScape, no player can currently get higher than level 120 which needs a combined 104,273,167 experience points to gain, nor can any one skill gain more than 200 million experience. Some games have a dynamic level cap, where the level cap is dependent upon the levels of the average player (so it gradually increases).

In some systems, such as the classic tabletop role-playing games Traveller, Call of Cthulhu and Basic Role-Playing, series progression is based on increasing individual statistics (skills, rank and other features) of the character, and is not driven by the acquisition of (general) experience points. The skills and attributes are made to grow through exercised use. Some authors believe that activity-based progression encourages tedious grinding processes, like forcing player to jump constantly to increase acrobatics skill in The Elder Scrolls series.[1][2][3]

Free-form advancement is used by many role-playing systems including GURPS, Hero System or the World of Darkness series. It allows the player to select which skills to advance by allocating "points". Each character attribute is assigned a price to improve, so for example it might cost a character 2 points to raise an archery skill one notch, 10 points to raise overall dexterity by one, or it might cost 20 points to learn a new magic spell.

Players are typically free to spend points however they choose, which greatly increases the control that a player has over the character's development, but also usually causes players to find that complexity increases as well. Some games therefore simplify character creation and advancement by suggesting packages or templates of pre-selected ability sets, so for example a player could have their character become an "investigator" by purchasing a package deal which includes many skills and abilities, rather than buying them each separately.

A cash-in experience advancement system uses experience points to "purchase" such character advancements as class levels, skill points, new skills, feats or increasing saving throw bonuses or base attribute points each of which has a set cost in experience points with set limits on the maximum bonuses that can be purchased at a given time usually once per game session. Once experience points are used thus they are "spent" and are erased from the character record or marked as spent and cannot be used again. Final Fantasy XIII and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay are examples of games that use a cash-in advancement system.

Some games use advancement systems which combine elements from two or more of the above types. For example, in the third edition of Dungeons & Dragons, whenever a level is gained in a character class, it provides a number of skill points (the exact number is calculated based on the class and the character's intelligence statistic), which can be spent to raise various skills. Character level (generally the sum of a character's total levels in all classes) is used to calculate how high skills can be raised, when an ability score can be raised and when a character can gain new feats (a class of special abilities which include special attacks, proficiencies in various weapons and bonuses on the dice rolls used to determine the outcome of various actions) and how many experience points are needed to advance in level. In Ragnarok Online, experience points are divided into two categories: base experience and job experience. Gaining base experience increases a character's base level, which is used to calculate a character's maximum HP and SP, increasing base level also provides points which can be spent to increase stats such as strength, agility and intelligence. Gaining job experience increases a character's job level, each job level provides a skill point which can be spent in the job's skill tree to gain a new ability, such as a spell, special attack or passive bonus, or improve an existing ability.