Gfyuki

I was reading this article called Behavioral Game Design, and it says:

...how do we make players maintain a high, consistent rate of activity? ... the answer is a variable ratio schedule, one where each response has a chance of producing a reward.

RPGs (I'm thinking of traditional JRPGs like Final Fantasy 1-6) don't do this when it comes to leveling up characters. You can always pause the game and look at how much XP you need to level up again. I haven't played WoW before, but I suspect it lets you know how much XP you need to level up, too. In WoW, there's plenty of examples of "variable ratio schedule" elsewhere in the game, so why not when it comes to XP you need to level up?

I suspect most professional game designers know the lessons in this article. So why is it typical for the XP you need for the next level to be known? They could design the game so that it's random, where you never know how many enemies you need to kill for that next level. So why don't they use this as an opportunity to have a "variable ratio schedule"?

It's common for games to have multiple overlapping loops of gameplay and reward, hitting different frequencies and motivation types, so that we don't have all our eggs in one basket, motivationally. This helps the game appeal to more players, and more consistently appeal to any one player, since every player is a multifaceted human being with a variety of interests & needs.

RPGs typically scratch the "variable ratio" itch with combat and loot drops. You have a random chance of encountering this mob or that mob, a random degree of success on attacks and dodges, and a random reward on completion. Unknown rewards in chests and breakables found as you progress through the world function similarly.

This forms a very high-frequency loop every few minutes of gameplay, making it well suited to produce a feeling of "just one more fight!" - a good loot roll could be just around the corner, and it only takes a few minutes more to try another time.

XP and leveling progression serve a different niche, on a longer term - ensuring the player can see they're making measurable progress and growth over hours of gameplay, or from one game session to the next. Even if I get a terrible sequence of loot rolls and am nowhere closer to crafting that shiny new item, hey, at least I'm 1000 XP closer to my next level, so I'm still being productive and haven't wasted my time!

Because of the longer timescale of leveling, a random chance isn't quite so motivating here. I don't want to sink another hour of play just for a chance I might level up. For an investment that large, a player will typically want some predictability. Even if I don't manage to hit level n+1 today, knowing I'm just 500 XP away makes me eager to come back and finish the level tomorrow, opening up a new long-term goal of hitting n+2...

So, it's not that these games forego variable ratio rewards, they're just choosy about where they deploy them. Player expectations is a factor here too - players have a lot of experience with random loot drops and predictable XP progression at this point, so sticking to this convention helps the players feel comfortable, and learn the systems efficiently. Suddenly making level progression randomized risks alienating players, so it's often safer to place those variable ratios elsewhere in the game design.