Final Fantasy X Exp Rewards.

I was talking to one of my friends about Final Fantasy X today. He and I agree it is an amazing game, but I told him of a particular flaw in the battle system I didn't like.

If a character participates in a battle, he or she will get full exp for it. It doesn't matter if you just sit back and defend for one turn, you participated. You can also swap out the characters you have in combat. This means that during any given battle, you can have everyone defend, swap them out for another set of characters, then have those characters do the killing and win the battle. Everyone will get full exp. So if one person wins a battle, and gets 100 exp, then seven characters could get 100 exp each from the same battle if they all 'contributed'.

So what is the problem with this? It encourages people to take twice as long in combat only to exploit a little mechanic to make sure their characters are leveling up evenly. It's not even fun swapping them out to do this, but I did it the whole way through both of my official playthoughs.

My friend argued that it is realistic that everyone who participates in a battle gets exp. I agree, but I don't think it should be full exp. I have a couple solutions to this problem, and they each have their own benefits and flaws. Depending on the context you apply these ideas will depend on the idea I would recommend.

One idea is to have a set value of exp a battle is worth. Then divide that up by how many turns it took to win the battle. Distribute the exp according awarding the most to those who took the most turns. That would solve the problem of encouraging a player to swap out his party members for one turn just so they could me included in gaining exp. But what about fast characters? Won't they level up faster?

This leads me to another suggestion. You could calculate the impact of an action. If someone moves fast, they are likely to not hit as hard as the stronger, slower characters. One big hit can earn as much exp from a battle as a couple of smaller hits. This will help solve the original problem with the battle system along with taking into account faster players. But there are a few concerns even with this approach. Would healing earn exp? What about item use? Some characters may be given to you when they are really weak. It would be very difficult to catch them up if the exp were awarded from effectiveness. This isn't to mention how big of a headache it would be to actually design the effectiveness rating of every action.

Perhaps the solution lies in a simpler idea. Again, make a battle worth a certain exp. Then DIVIDE the exp up between all who participated. So if one person wins a battle worth 100 exp, then seven people would get about 14 or 15 exp each for the same battle. Therefore, the overall party's exp would not grow any faster because you simply swapped out a character to defend for one turn. You are just as fair to fast, weak characters as you are to the slow strong ones. It wouldn't be a pain in the butt to get some of your weaker guys caught up to the rest of the clan, and you can save your battle designers the headache of balancing 'effectiveness ratings'.